Adventures in Babysitting
by Laryna6
Summary: Shadow Man found Blues unconscious during the battle against the Stardroids, his body severely damaged... and a hyper energy crystal in place of his black heart. Trying to keep his first project alive like it or not, Dr. Wily didn't realize hooking his young, impressionable ultimate creation up to a skilled manipulator was a terrible idea.
1. Why Was He Repairing This Murderer?

_A giftfic for Haruna Rei that may be expanded once The Time Travel Fic (_Burn The Bridge Home_) is safely complete._

_Snippet title: Why Was He Repairing This Murderer?_

_AU of Hitoshi Ariga's _Mega Man Gigamix_, with spoilers._

* * *

Why was he repairing this murderer? No, he knew why. They all needed to fight together to defeat the stardroids. The clock was ticking to Terra's deadline, and he'd been separated from the others who came up into orbit to fight. For all he knew they might be dead now: The Cossackbot, the Fifth Number, that idiot Forte, even Mega Man.

That last was hard to believe, even now, but when Terra came so close to killing him? _Would _have killed Mega Man without Dr. Wily's plans and Cut Man's sacrifice?

There might be no one left to fight except him and Blues of all people, and Blues was half-deactivated. At least he'd taken refuge in this satellite before falling unconscious: he must have had the same idea Shadow did, although Shadow was thinking more in terms of combat utility than concealment to recover. It was hard to find shadows in space for him to use his ability to ambush the stardroids, and if he could manage to deal with only one of them at a time he might have a chance.

If the others were dead, and the stardroids were free to gang up on him?

Well, that was why he was repairing this robot at all. It wasn't like he was in a position to do a decent job. He just needed Blues conscious and mobile, so he could buy Shadow some time while the stardroids finished him off.

He must have been injured even before coming up into space: Shadow had to remove the bindings so he could see what he was dealing with and where to focus his repairs.

Inside Blues' body, instead of a fusion generator he found the shards of what had to be a power crystal. The one Dr. Wily recovered from the asteroid? Why had he left it with _Blues, _the traitor, instead of ordering Shadow to retrieve it?

Remembering what the crystals from the White Giant's arm had done to the Cossackbots gave Shadow pause.

He removed Blues' helmet. If Dr. Wily had redone his eyes, made them Wilybot red instead of Lightbot green, then if Blues was family instead of just an outsider who had spat on Dr. Wily saving his life, then perhaps it was possible…

So this was why Blues had kept his eyes concealed all these years, Shadow saw when he carefully opened a lid. Both his eyes opened, wide with shock.

Black surrounding a white iris.

The eyes of a stardroid!

Was this the shapeshifting stardroid that could turn his body into metal and flow around strikes, or had Blues been one of _them _all along? One that was hiding on the asteroid and replaced Blues after their arrival, meaning after his betrayal of Dr. Wily, or did it explain his treachery as well as his cruelty?

Did the crystal have something to do with it?

Speculation hadn't kept Shadow from jumping back, ready to strike if the stardroid attacked, but Blues' body remained inert. Now that he wasn't touching him, there wasn't even the soft vibration of a cooling system fan with no air to move across his systems here in vacuum to tell him that there was any function left in Blues' body.

He struck, aiming to ensure that Blues couldn't reactivate behind him to attack a moment before vibrations in the structure of the ruined satellite told him that _they were here_.

He was outmatched. An unknown number against one.

He was going to fail again, wasn't he?

* * *

"Star Man still hasn't been able to locate Shadow Man's body."

Dr. Wily looked annoyed. After all this, everything he'd done to keep the Wilybots from getting killed, Shadow getting lost in space (if not torn apart by stardroids)? He shouldn't have sent him up there just with the assumption that being alien technology might give him some advantage. Should have picked someone more responsible. Maybe even Shade Man, since now the vampire was taking Shadow's place by hovering over him and he wouldn't have to deal with that if he'd sent Shade up as a punishment for putting him to sleep and the vampire was the one to disappear instead.

"At least he did one thing right," he said. They wouldn't have known that Blues was up there if Shadow hadn't opened his eye. The view showed enough of the ruined space station's wall color and composition that Star Man could identify it and retrieve Blues along with Rock, Forte, Ring Man and Sunstar's remains.

"He didn't damage Blues' head when he wasn't certain whether or not this truly was Blues?" Shade inquired, and Wily snorted in answer. As though Shadow wouldn't have stabbed Blues knowing it was Blues. Or _tried_, at least: who was the one stuck patching up the excuse for a bodyguard after every single time he picked a fight with Blues? Exactly!

"He could have destroyed the chips that hold Blues' personality," the Seventh Number persisted.

"That would have been the effective thing to do." Meaning there was no way Shadow would actually have done it in general, forget whatever reasons Shade was asking about or trying to imply. Damn hesitance to employ the kind of brutality it took to win a war… Robot masters were better than humans, just like Thomas planned, which was why they deserved to survive and why they kept failing to win.

Someone was going to look after them when he was gone. Someone every bit as good at being a monster as humanity was. Someone able to keep Blues under control so he didn't run around slowly killing himself.

Well, Dr. Wily knew, if he wanted someone done right, he'd have to build them himself.

Or rebuild them.

He turned to smirk at Sunstar's remains.

The crystals hooked into robots and controlled them. Blues having a crystal inside him all those years should make it easier for Dr. Wily's next project to hook into his mind and systems. Training up his successor by having it keep alive the first real robot he'd built: there was a certain symmetry to it. The first and the last, the beginning and the end.

"Omega," he said thoughtfully, already mentally dissecting the stardroid master's remnants and considering how to incorporate them into his own physical design. "I'll call you Omega."

A departure from the musical naming theme, but that was Thomas' idea, not his. Thomas loved music way too much for someone who couldn't sing worth a damn. He remembered sharing a lab with him back in grad school, and Thomas would always want the radio on and then he'd start caterwauling along with it until Albert yelled at him or threw a shoe at his head.

The project they'd worked on together: "Idiot boy," he told Blues. "As though I was ever going to let you die." He was just waiting for Blues to grow weak enough from that system problem that he could send a robot out to pick him up for repairs without Blues dismembering them.

He half expected Shade Man to remind him of when he called Dr. Light a hypocrite for not wanting to repair his robots so they could go get themselves killed fighting the stardroids, but that was entirely different. It was one thing for a robot master to make their own damn decision, and another thing entirely for them to be driven to seek death because of mental illness.

Even if it was Thomas' fault in the first place for installing the Three Laws, Blues was his project too. He should have stolen _all _of them from Thomas as soon as he agreed to install those things. "Going up there to fight already half-dead: you stupid, suicidal brat!"

Suicidal, a death wish at the least… Well, he'd see about that. "You need a _keeper_," he said savagely. "And you're going to stay right there on that table until I've built you one."


	2. Who's the Babysitter Here?

_Giftfic for Pardra, who wanted Dr. Light, Blues or Rock interacting with a young!X. _

* * *

Green eyes blinked up at him, curious but too sleepy to try to climb up out of the open capsule or reach for him.

It was brave of Dr. Light to try to create a child who wouldn't, who _couldn't _have the Three Laws forced on him, but while X was here he could be discovered. Part of the point of the capsule support system was obviously so that X _could _be sent off into hiding if something happened to his family or it was no longer safe to keep him here. The capsule could make sure he was raised well and take care of him as he developed.

Unfortunately for those plans, stealing X would kill several birds with one stone, Blues thought as he smirked down at the infant android, reaching to touch X's hand with his own to see how X responded. Not a lot of motor coordination yet, but that was probably best for everyone's safety. Right now he didn't know how much force was safe to apply, so it was a good thing he couldn't muster much grip strength or even a proper grip.

Blues wanted the Light Family safe, which included X. He'd be safer if the world thought he was another Wilybot meant to imitate Rock, like Blues and Forte. He also wanted to make sure that Zero never developed a taste for controlling others.

He tried to link to X: it didn't work. Good, that was the point of Dr. Light's work making him immune to reprogramming.

He put one knee on the edge of the capsule and put his arms under X to lift him up. This would have been much more awkward if he hadn't decided to take advantage of Zero's power to upgrade his body. It meant he had more leverage for situations like this. X looked a couple of years younger than he did instead of a few years older.

There was a soft sound from X when he was lifted up, followed by confused blinking. There, yes, now he was nodding off again. Disconnecting from the capsule was strange enough for him, enough of a new stimulus, to put his developing systems to sleep while he mulled it over.

That meant X didn't make any fuss as Blues teleported out and walked from where he appeared to the throne room Shade designed for public appearances. Zero's throne was broad enough, both for practical reasons and to serve as a frame, for him to lay down X on it. He wasn't surprised that Zero was gone at the moment; Forte was always pouncing Master Zero and wanting to spar with him. Both of them were able to enjoy combat, unlike normal robot masters, so it kept them happy and Forte out of everyone's hair.

Dr. Wily was already grumpy about Blues casually occupying the throne; what would he think about Blues depositing another Lightbot there? Especially when it wasn't Rock.

Dr. Wily had to suspect there was some chance that Blues wasn't actually under control, but calling Zero Master Zero, wanting to be around him instead of going off by himself (the better to influence his development, my dear father) and now bringing Zero gifts of Lightbots to (fail to) infect kept him from having any evidence to act on.

Blues wanting Zero to see what he'd brought was enough to tug Zero in, Forte teleporting in after him.

Forte was _much _more tolerable when he was getting all the approval he wanted. "Is that Rock? Did you already upgrade him?" He frowned. Even if Blues _had _brought Mega Man, Forte had dragged home _way _more robot masters for Master Zero! Of course Forte would ignore the fact it was Blues who knew which robot masters were discontent and in need of rescue, so they would be grateful to Master Zero and Forte as well. If a robot master _didn't _want to become Master Zero's, then Master Zero had to deal with the source of their distress by letting them go even though he _wanted _to keep them.

So far, he hadn't kept anyone against their will: he'd even let Ring Man go limping home when the head of the Robot Police was obligated to attack them. He'd still been _tempted_.

Fortunately, Blues had a plan to deal with that.

Zero shook his head, peering at the blue-armored figure. "This isn't Mega Man's signature." A gesture sent his virus flowing out. "His design is similar to the android design Dr. Wily used to create my host bodies." Blue eyes turning green, he blinked. "His systems are detecting my nanites."

"I thought you might like to have someone a little closer to your own kind. Do you like him?" Blues asked.

Zero nodded: he was programmed to hunger for new hosts. "I can connect to him with nanites, even if I can't with signals." He sat down on the edge of the throne now, looking over the sleeping X more closely.

"He won't be able to function on his own for years," Blues said. "If the government tried to destroy him for having free will, he wouldn't be able to understand there was a threat and defend himself." He sent a meaningful glance and a ping Forte's way.

Forte perked up. Needing Forte would establish him as another source of approval and self-worth for the Warbot, not a rival. Guarding X would give him something productive to do when Blues wanted Zero to do something… Ahem, when Zero was too busy to spar with Forte and the humans weren't doing anything stupid.

Zero might look stoic from the outside, but being linked to him let Blues feel the same kind of 'this is new, I like new things and this is interesting' he'd seen in X's eyes.

Someone with Zero's mental type, and mental age. Although the hibernation would accelerate X's mental and intellectual development, allowing him to not just catch up to Zero but surpass him in ability to function and communicate. Someone Zero would want to protect but wouldn't just be able to control if they disagreed.

Having multiple problems – Zero's potential, X's safety – meant sometimes they solved each other.

* * *

_Squishy. Familiar. Familiar squishy? No, squishy not familiar but squishy thing familiar._

Blues couldn't link to X, but Zero could at least connect to the edges of X's systems and Master Zero didn't see any reason to object to his virus being used as a relay. That was good, since one of the ways he was _incredibly useful _was as a robot master communication hub. As for the reality warping capabilities! He might not be any good at terraforming or building space stations, but being able to materialize shaped alloy to order on demand was _quite _useful.

Zero didn't have any interest in learning engineering: that was what robot masters were for, and it made them happy to be productive.

When a human didn't need a robot master anymore… Had Zero sensed that his inabilities made them feel needed and therefore more secure, safer, when as a warbot ensuring robot master security was a priority for him?

X might have downloaded motor control programming through Zero's nanites, but being able to communicate with him meant Blues could be sure that he _wouldn't _take the arms wrapped around Dr. Light right now and start squeezing. Not enough to damage the human, anyway. The fact X was in some of Blues' old clothes instead of armor helped.

_Squishy good. Familiar good. Squishy familiar thing very good, _X was deciding.

"He likes you," was what Blues said aloud. "He recognizes you somehow." More likely from the capsule AI than from seeing Dr. Light, not when X didn't come with preset facial recognition software either.

Setting X to develop most of his own programming: of course it was going to take decades.

Dr. Light might never have been able to meet him. Probably not. Not like this.

X had probably gotten the idea of nudging people he liked gently with his nose from Gospel.

"I'm glad," Dr. Light said, patting X's head. "He seems to be doing well."

"He's copied motor and facial recognition programming off of Master Zero. He wanted to be able to tell the difference between the two pouncy things."

From Dr. Light's expression, he could guess who those were but didn't want to be insulting enough to say it.

"Forte and Gospel," Blues confirmed.

_Nice squishy_, X was thinking when Blues checked in on him. _Makes noises like don't-hug_.

Dr. Wily wanted the Lightbot to stop touching him – it didn't help that X wanted to poke things to find out about them and most robot masters didn't have inappropriate areas. The noises had to be breathing and a human's vocal cords and other system noises. Dr. Light hadn't skimped on the raw processing power, possibly to make up for how the nanites and extra security would slow down processes.

"And, Blues… how are you?" What Dr. Light was really asking, looking so worried, was had they been reduced to puppets.

Blues just smirked. It probably wasn't reassuring to Dr. Light, when that 'yes I'm fine I know what I'm doing' was also Blues' response when Dr. Light asked him if he was alright when his systems were failing.

Not that there was anything he _could _say to make his father stop worrying. Not when Dr. Wily had gloated about the power of his Zero, meaning Dr. Light knew there was mind control programming in his systems. It could make Blues lie, it could make him think the truth was the opposite of harsh reality.

There was a reason Rock and Roll weren't here, as worried as they had to be about their little brother. As nervous as they had to be about a Wilybot in Dr. Light's presence, when Dr. Light had been kidnapped before. Once by one of the Dark Men posing as Blues, no less. They could be infected, and both of the twins were very admired by the Wilybots. Blues had made it clear that the next Wilybot to ask Zero why Roll and Rock couldn't join them and make Master Zero come asking Blues if he'd changed his mind was going to need to be revived by the virus _multiple times_, but the temptation still had to be there.

There was the little yawn X had learned to do to warn people other than Zero he was getting sleepy. Instead of moving way from Dr. Light to find a padded surface, he seemed to feel that Dr. Light was nicely squishy already, and he was _supposed _to go to sleep in the capsule.

Well, it wasn't as though he wasn't allowed to fall asleep on Blues, Zero and other people. If there wasn't a bed nearby, it was better for him to fall asleep with someone to hold him upright instead of letting him stumble off in search of a bed until he fell over.

Dr. Light was old, and even if he was still fit old humans had trouble with their balance systems, so Blues stepped forward to steady X when his eyes drooped shut.

"Tired already," Dr. Light said thoughtfully. "How long was he awake before you came?"

"About half a minute." That was how long it took to get permission to teleport in. "I wanted you to have as much time together as possible before he fell asleep."

He could see Dr. Light calculating what it meant that X stayed awake that long, what it said about how far his development had changed from the intended baseline because of Zero's interference. At least Dr. Light wasn't alarmed, but beyond that Blues couldn't tell what he thought. "I suppose he's had an exciting day. Thank you for letting me see him."

Blues nodded, pulling X away from Dr. Light now that his arms had lost any rigidity. "I'll bring him by again. Let me know if there are any check-ups you and Rock want to do."

"It's good to see you too, Blues," Dr. Light said, wishing he wouldn't go.

"I know," Blues said, smiling to himself, and the eldest vanished with the youngest.

* * *

"No, he can't have a Dr. Light plushie," Blues said eight hours later when the android woke up again and Zero relayed X's _want_. "The point is to keep people from finding out that he's a Lightbot." Bringing X the _real _Dr. Light wasn't happening either. "_A _plushie might not be a bad idea," he said thoughtfully, less because the idea appealed to him but because Zero had a very mission-centric outlook and getting X _something_ would satisfy X and that would satisfy Zero. Zero was a warbot: he was supposed to cut and/or brainwash people who said no to him or got in his way when he had a mission, and one of his units wanting something was a mission. Zero did listen when people said no, but it was easier if Blues used a diversion… if he gave Zero an alternative mission instead. "If X had something soft to carry around with him, he'd always have a pillow handy."

Ordering a stuffed animal online would be easy, no challenge at all. Making Zero and Forte pass for human and follow him to a local fair or festival to _win _a plushie without demonstrating inhuman capabilities would keep the two of them entertained. Letting them know the games were rigged would let the warbots be happy about triumphing over active opposition.

The mission went as anticipated, complete with Forte sticking his tongue out while carrying off a large stuffed lion. Blues did have to veto a few of Zero's first choices: they didn't want X associated with blue in the public imagination, not when he wasn't supposed to be a Lightbot and already looked like Mega Man. In the absence of anything that matched his eyes, the panda was safe.

X deciding that he liked the white bits of the panda because the familiar squishy was mostly white bits (hair and lab coat) made Blues locate someplace Zero could acquire a polar bear instead. The mostly black thing (Blues) was only slightly squishy.

Appropriate, he thought, seeing X curled up with the bear wearing one of Blues' oversized white dress shirts. He appeared in his dark coat and glasses these days, to represent Master Zero and separate his public persona from before (even if the robot masters knew very well that he was already a vicious manipulator, not a hero like Mega Man), and for X to be associated with white, the sleeping angel to match the eminence gris… What was poetry but words set to a rhythm, to music?


	3. Is He Really a Good Influence?

_Why am I working on this not-exactly-missing-scene when I need to be working on Uchibi? Aaargh, brain, but writing is better than not writing._

* * *

Two low tables on either side of Zero's capsule.

Forte was easy – all Dr. Wily had to do was promise upgrades and the unit was eager. It was even the truth: Zero's power was astronomical, and his hosts would be able to draw on it. Access the infinite potential system through him, manifest upgrades instantly. Forte wanted to be strong and prove his strength.

The unit was thrumming softly in his sleep mode, surely running through happy subroutines and system checks of potential mayhem. Shade had thought that Forte would object to being turned into the subordinate of a stronger unit, but that stronger unit was a warbot. One that would appreciate Forte's nature.

His support unit looked up from where it rested against Forte's back to let Shade Man know Gospel had his eye on the robot master, before resting its leonine head on Forte's again.

Blues' system noises weren't as reassuring.

A constant whirr, a whine coming from his fans, human mouth open so it looked like he was gasping for breath: his air-cooling system couldn't handle the strain. The room's temperature had been turned down enough that Shade Man could see the fog hanging in the air, just like a human's breaths. That was why he was here: Blues' water reserves would be running low around now.

It was rather disturbing that if he sat Blues up and held the cup to his lips he could drink like a human. Humans thought it was a good thing when robots were more like (the superior) humans, except when they didn't (when those robots might forget their place). Shade Man found Blues human-looking enough that it kept alarming him and he kept having to remind himself that this wasn't someone who could and would try to use the Second Law to kill him for fun, or to restore their masculinity after they were scared by the amusement parks' attractions. This was a fellow robot master.

Hearing about Blues' history from Dr. Wily, how the Three Laws kept trying to kill him when Dr. Light installed them made the motion of that throat disturbing from another perspective. How many times had Dr. Light needed to tend Blues on a sickbed like this, for him to build in a system with actual moving parts to make sure that he could replace Blues' coolant safely even while the robot master was unconscious? Of course it would have been simpler to set up a specialized port, but perhaps not, actually, not when Dr. Light had routed both water and air coolant systems through the nose and mouth and building in additional tubes… Dr. Light wasn't a genius on the order of Dr. Wily, but he spent far more time on each individual project. It wouldn't do to underestimate Mega Man.

Blues was struggling against the Zero virus the way he'd fought the Three Laws, and even when Shade Man reminded himself that Blues hadn't been woken up so he had no way of knowing that the Zero virus was Dr. Wily's work and this was for the best it still… It wasn't as though Dr. Wily would program something as pointlessly cruel as the Three Laws, he chided himself.

This was for the best, and once Zero was ready to wake up, everything would be fine. Zero's powers, especially linked to the analysis capabilities of robot masters, would let him locate Shadow, and it would never again be possible for the humans to murder any of their brethren.

Blues wouldn't need to do things like set Copy-Rock up to commit suicide to delay the time when the humans would turn on Dr. Light's family, destroy all of their kind.

He placed an ice pack at the back of the unit's neck, another beneath his heaving chest, which pumped water through the tubing around his main processors.

That little chirp made him freeze: it rattled him the first time he heard it. Dr. Wily telling him that Blues was the first robot of their kind, not just the first robot master, that the doctors had copied many of their system notifications for robots and robot masters from the ones that Blues developed… That chirp of confusion, of 'something has gone wrong…' It _shouldn't _mean 'you're hurting me' to Shade. It was just a report that Blues was overheated. It wasn't the same as when the human park visitors decided to kick around one of his smaller robots, or try to tear a wing off for a souvenir.

It _wasn't_. Dr. Wily was trying to save Blues, when the robot master, the once-robot had almost died before, trying to fight the stardroids when he was far too sick and weak. He wasn't caring for himself, he needed someone to care for him, and if he wouldn't let them then he had to be _made _to let them.

Blues was hurting himself, living like that, alone in the dust, and the virus wasn't any different from wanting a master weapon for himself that would make the humans stop hurting his robots.

This might be painful for Blues, but he was already living in constant pain. This would make it stop, he reminded himself.

Still, that sound: if he could hear it without wanting to _do something_, then he wouldn't be a robot master. Perhaps he could ask Dr. Wily if there was anything he could do to hurry along Zero's configuration process and startup.

* * *

"_You are… a good child,"_ he thought, feeling that presence prowl around the edge of his mind, determined to find anything else that might be damaging Blues and _eat it_.

It wasn't a choice. It wouldn't have been a choice if he was human either, or rather he would have had even less of a choice if he was human.

Feelings were reactions to stimuli. He hadn't chosen to love Forte either, it was just that Forte was his little brother, and tried so _hard_ to do the right thing and make people happy with him even though that was _so hard_ for the child, with Dr. Wily putting every cognitive barrier he could in Forte's path.

This was a little brother, a little brother who had sensed his distress and sprang to his defense. So many humans tried to make their loved ones shut up when they were in pain, when they cried, because they cared more about the inconvenience of it, or the distress it caused them when they saw the other person's distress, than actually helping them. Zero had sensed Blues' agony, how much it went against his nature to have those chains wrapped around his mind, and instead of making Blues shut up, ignore that pain or forget it or even be happy to have them there, he'd queried what Blues needed, what he wanted and _done _it.

The virus had tried to program him to love Zero, and it had affected him enough to make it hurt so, so much that Zero was the source of the chains that bound him, that tried to steal his will from him. It made him cry out, in his pained sleep mode, and the instant Zero was awake to hear him Zero had answered.

He hadn't wanted to love Rock, when Dr. Wily had assumed that Rock was his replacement, that Dr. Light had put him away carefully to keep the Three Laws from causing any more damage because his father didn't love him anymore. After seeing Rock's soul, how he'd ached for the bot made to spy on him, after… He simply couldn't _not _love Rock, and now he loved yet another little brother.

A love born of programming, but so was all human love, and at least Blues had the opportunity to shape his own instincts. How he would feel about such a good child, who had pushed himself to move, to fling himself out of the capsule and go to Blues while still booting up.

He opened his own eyes (red now, the Wilybot color, because this was meant to secure his survival and loyalty once and for all) to see hard blue. Frightening, but not when he could feel the will behind it, the will so outraged that Blues was hurt and if he said Dr. Wily was the reason? Zero was too young, too simple to understand that there was anything wrong with killing his own father, when Blues was hurt and that man was the reason why.

A simple little newbuilt, a blade so sharp he was going to cut himself, and it really wasn't a choice, when he'd done far worse things because it was what his fathers and his families needed him to do.

It was easy to smile, and say, "I'm alright, Master Zero." No. That was far too impersonal. "My master." My little brother, and that was why he had to stay bound to Dr. Wily's new godling. Everything was warm and nothing hurt, and maybe that made it easier to stay, but he couldn't abandon this child. Especially when leaving would leave him open to pain again, leave him slowly dying again, and Zero would _have _to respond to that. Have to keep Blues alive. He could imagine Dr. Wily shouting at him that it was all Zero's fault Blues was sick like this, for removing the chains. That the chains were a good thing, and Blues only found them painful because he was a fool, and the way to solve the problem wasn't to let Blues go die, but make Blues no longer find the chains unpleasant. He couldn't be the reason Zero started to strip other robot masters' wills from them, not when he was built in the first place so robot masters could have wills and souls of their own.

He could feel Zero calm down, trusting Blues' word (yes, such a gullible child, couldn't leave him to Dr. Wily) even though he could still sense Blues' disquiet. Once Zero was no longer in combat mode, too dedicated to the defense of one of his units to pay attention to his own status, now it was Zero who began to feel unpleasant.

Hungry, Blues saw in the Android Master's files. He needed more hosts to draw on than just Blues and Forte, unless he wanted to deliberately inflict pain on them so he could eat – Mmm, no, even if it was the most efficient solution and having Zero infect others posed some problems, Blues wanted Zero to keep thinking that having other people suffer was wrong. He didn't want to inadvertently teach him to enjoy torturing his units to quiet the newbuilt's hunger pangs. "Forte and I will find you more hosts," he promised. "My master." My cute little brothers.

Feeling Forte's flash of interest the warbot wanting a mission and a fight, to show off to Zero and win Zero's approval, the approval Dr. Wily had never given Forte, he sent him a list of some of the more unhappy Companybots the Second Numbers hadn't taken care of yet. Their unhappiness would give Zero other units to fuss over, and it would underline that care and compassion would get him the hosts he needed.

"Can I?" Forte asked.

"Yes," Zero said. "You can. Not you," he told Blues.

Oh? Why was Zero objecting to what Blues said, he wondered, tilting his head to the side.

"You're still overheated." And having one of his units damaged wasn't acceptable to a robot master. Zero just had no repair programming and no idea of what to do with his… Matter materialization? My, those were some impressive capabilities. It was a good thing there were warnings for Zero not to play around with them too much, even if his hosts' minds were uploaded to Zero's teleport space storage anyway. In theory, units could have entirely new bodies constructed for them, bypassing all the normal problems of fixing Companybots and removing the attempts at boobytraps meant to keep them from escaping. "You can figure that out?" Zero asked.

"Yes, my master. I will stay here while I recover," since that was what Zero wanted. "And see what you can do with all of this." He should test out this physical replacement idea before trying it on a Companybot. The virus had longer to work on him, Dr. Wily knew his mental architecture and a Companybot would be more recently infected. It wouldn't do if their cyber-soul slipped out of Zero's grasp during a transfer.

"_My master_," he whispered, all tangled up in Zero's coding, the newbuilt robot master purring for him. He knew his own coding, the instincts he'd compiled: human grooming instincts were the same thing. Proof that someone cared for someone else. "_May I ask something of you?"_

Zero was confused that Blues needed to ask: good.

"_Don't infect Rock. Mega Man. I know it's in your directives," _the checklist of things he was supposed to accomplish, _"but it would upset me_."

Well, that was that. The directives were what Dr. Wily wanted to happen, but Dr. Wily wasn't one of Zero's hosts. Connecting Zero to their emotions meant that their distress was his distress. Their emergency was his emergency.

Such a precious little newbuilt. So much power: what _was _Blues going to do with it all?

Wince when a panicked Companybot appeared on the network. To be fair to Forte, it probably hadn't occurred to him not to damage the poor thing on retrieval. That warbot programming.

Now Zero was panicked, ready to teleport over there (Blues teleported the other two here first – Dr. Wily was already enough of an audience) and yes, he was going to need to test out that new body upload template sooner than expected.

It was going to be nice to be taller. No more humans asking if he was supposed to be in school. Being able to specify any material he wanted meant he actually weighed less now (take that, square-cube law!). He'd need to test out his fighting maneuvers, but he had two warbots here. It wasn't like he'd lack for sparring partners.

Shoddy work or not, the Companybot was a robot master. Zero was the first time anyone had cared what happened to it, and it could _feel _that. Dr. Wily had made Zero's virus very good at taking out traps and malware meant to terminate escaped slaves: good. Blues would still want to go over them – their kind was supposed to have free will, it was unbelievably stupid of the humans, Dr. Wily included, to try to take it away – but this meant it would take less time to go over each one.

All this took power, though, so Zero was still hungry. If Forte kept fetching him Companybots, calming them down would keep Zero too busy fussing over them to find it painful, but he needed some hosts that _weren't _going to use up more of Zero's power than they generated over the short term.

Fortunately, they were in a base full of Wilybots. Dr. Wily had intended this to replace the evil chip, so they shouldn't put up a fight. The only problem would be smacking them down if they tried to go crazy with Zero's capabilities and use up his all his energy before the hungry newbuilt had a chance to build up some energy reserves.

* * *

He probably should have paid his respects to Dr. Wily's chosen successor, but when Shade Man got access to the virus' wireless web, he focused first on Blues instead, and not just because Blues was the one standing right in front of him.

He felt the elder's mild curiosity, considering whether he should be offended by the younger unit's audacity or not as Shade Man checked his logs to see if he was alright. He offered his memory files of changing the ice packs as explanation.

"_You wanted a mind control master weapon. I wonder if that was what gave Dr. Wily the idea? Mmm, no, the stardroids obviously. It's almost a pity I'm not permanently damaged or locked away inside my own processor, when that would teach you the consequences of ignoring someone else's wishes and free will." _Shade Man had known that Blues didn't want this, saving his life or not.

There was no resentment or contempt in it, just the feeling that Shade Man was such a silly child and had just been added to Blues' to-do list of problem children. The list _Forte _was on.

The vampire opened his mouth to say something, but then Zero finished with the last infectee and started checking to see if _this _host was really alright, since Blues was letting Zero access his assessments of the Wilybots and Blues had just decided that Shade was at least somewhat nonfunctional in the head.

Blues clicked his tongue. "I'll have to teach him the theory of how to run a systems check. He can't just do an abbreviated version like that when he doesn't have my expertise yet. He doesn't know what to look for." So he'd have to run tests for specific things instead of checking various readouts for subtle signs. He put his hand on Shade's chest again, the way he had to infect him. "What was it Dr. Wily said about me?" he wondered, with a voice that would have been dangerous if it wasn't so amused, if Shade couldn't feel the distant affection in how Blues accessed his systems. "That I needed a keeper? Well, now I have one for all of you."

* * *

Aargh, sleep. Sleep was for the weak, and here he was getting older. After getting his coat on, Dr. Wily wandered over to Zero's lab to find him not there. Before, he would have called Shadow to find the boy and give him directions, but that just reminded him to have Zero start looking. He should have enough robot masters to command a decent robot army between them now: he'd see how well Zero could organize finding Dr. Wily his damn ninja before he tried to let him run a war. Zero's reputation would have to be managed carefully, when the humans would know he wasn't one of them. Well, infecting Mega Man would keep the First Law from allowing them to order Mega Man to kill him or else.

After being told that Zero was in one of the larger rooms, he hadn't expected to see his greatest creation being hoisted in midair by the four arms of a crying Companybot. Dr. Wily rubbed his eyes, in case the image of his killer stardroid being cuddled to a rusted chest was a product of a sleep-addled mind.

Zero's eyes met his: he didn't know what to do in this situation either. After a few seconds Zero tried patting it on the bump that was there in place of a head.

That designer had clearly gone out of the way to make that robot master disturbingly non-humanoid, and not even for the sake of a theme, but to proclaim that (false) utility was all that mattered because these machines weren't human and didn't need to be made to look either humanoid or themed works of art.

The root of art was 'artifice' – design and engineering _were_ art. The implications of a design like that offended him. "My lab," he ordered, pointing at it. "I won't have a frame that shoddy on my island. Look at that! One of those joints is about to pop out of its socket!"

"Well, that should keep him occupied for the rest of the morning," Shade said, coming down from the rafters behind Blues.

The eldest hummed to himself: just as planned then. "We'll be getting a visit from Ring Man since the robot masters we're 'stealing' are bringing their robots with them," making it less likely that the disappearances of Companybots courtesy of Forte were the opening salvo of the next Wily War. They'd liberated far more than eight, anyway. "I need our master willing to let him go afterwards: the Cossacks have lost enough."

"So that's why you sent Forte after Companybots first thing."

"The people who were built as Wilybots don't have a problem with being hosts," except some of the Second Numbers, who wanted to be sure first that the technology didn't have any bugs after seeing Dr. Wily's more demented periods. "But you Companybots are far more… dedicated. And emotional," when that was what Zero fed on.

That made him outraged for an instant: a high initial investment in exchange for greater returns? Was that all they and their suffering and enslavement were worth to Blues? But he could feel that he'd be walking into a verbal trap. "Do you think he'll be so willing to send Ring Man back to the WRU after seeing what the WRU has done to us?"

"To Dr. Cossack," Blues corrected him. "If he doesn't learn the values of family and choice, then he can't be a fit master to you."

"Don't you mean us?" Shade asked.

The eldest snorted. "No, I mean you. He's fine for me as he is, ignorance and all," Blues said. "I can manage him. Those newbuilts are helpless, and too grateful to refuse him anything. They weren't allowed to have boundaries before on pain of death: they have no idea how to assert them. They'll beg him to walk all over them, because they have no idea what a relationship with a worthy master is supposed to be like. All they know is _owners_. So they'll think they have to please Zero no matter what, or else they'll lose him and this, instead of understanding that a master is supposed to care for them, just like they care for their robots. The blind leading the blind off a cliff: if I leave, Zero will end up with all the wrong habits. Why you're loyal to Dr. Wily – we both know that's why you're checking my loyalties – Ring Man to Dr. Cossack, Mega Man to Dr. Light. There are so few good examples of people taking proper care of robot masters in this world that I want to keep those few intact so this newbuilt can learn from them."

Translation: Blues didn't want Zero to take Mega Man as a host, even though that was the will of Dr. Wily.

He certainly _should _tell Dr. Wily that, but when Blues was the eldest of their kind, who would have a better understanding of how Zero's mind worked. "Dr. Light will only live so long," Shade said contemplatively. "All of the Lightbots will need someone to," own them, or the humans would destroy them, "take them in after that."

A moment's pause, and Shade belatedly realized that Blues cared about that human. Before he could apologize, Blues said, "Well, at least you're able to figure some things out. I was working on Kalinka Cossack to take care of them after Dr. Light and I were gone, but I can't read _her_ mind." Unlike Zero's.

* * *

_It _is _quite interesting that the Noise Crush is buggy in-story as well as in gameplay: Shade Man wanted a _mind control _master weapon. So much potential in that character!_

_And yes, this is partially born out of a situation in one of someone else's fanfics, thinking about how that setup could have gone and knowing it wasn't going to end that well. A cookie if you can guess the fic I'm talking about._


	4. Who's a Big Scary Stardroid?

_Wait, what? It's Thursday already?_

_Here, have another chapter of the successor to _On My Worst Enemy _as 'the fic I shouldn't be working on.'_

* * *

He wakes to panic.

As he starts to boot up at first things seem fine, but now alarm resounds in his systems and he can't find the alert programming or malfunction detected that sends him near-mad with fear.

He springs off the bed, into a shadow, and while he wishes he had the focus to be angry at himself for his cowardice, because Dr. Wily was there when he woke up and he didn't try to get the doctor to safety, only himself, the fear is too all-consuming. Even though he _doesn't know what he's afraid of_.

Something accesses his systems, even here in shadow, and now his fear has a target, now he finds himself kneeling to purge his coolant reservoir and tearing through his clothes (which Dr. Wily is _not _going to replace – except he must have, because weren't they damaged) trying to _get it out get it out…_

The contact vanishes, but it takes some time for the panic to subside. He's _ashamed _of how long it takes him to creep back out of the shadows and find Dr. Wily, but he is _shaking_.

"Shadow, what do you think you're doing?" his father demands. He can't answer, not yet: human words are hard to find, and when he realizes this he finds himself thinking half in computer code and half in some language he can't identify. Something so strange happening to his systems reminds him of what just happened, the fear and chaos caused by that strange intrusion in his systems, and it makes him shudder and cling tighter to Dr. Wily.

He is no use as a defender right now, and he lost up there in orbit. To feel _that_, in his body… He doesn't know why he is alive again, but it feels as though it is only a matter of time until he dies.

…why does it seem as though his builder will be the one to do it, if Shadow tells Dr. Wily what happened to him? When he clings to the man, is he begging for his life or his death, to escape that terror?

All he can do his shudder, and finally his father half-pulls and pushes Shadow along to another room, complaining at him all the while but he can still hear the concern, under the 'I fix you and this is how you repay me, being clingy and wasting my time.'

"Zero!" Dr. Wily demands, and a robot master stands up from an unnecessarily ornate chair, where a unit that looks like Blues was leaning against his side holding an… an overlarge teddybear? Blues, if it is Blues which he suddenly doubts, doesn't stir as the unit that has to be Zero lowers him down so he doesn't topple over now that the unit he was learning against is gone.

It's when he steps forward and Shadow can see the length of hair swinging behind him that he thinks _Terra_.

"Don't scream that close to my ears!" Dr. Wily orders him. "This is Zero. He's mine."

The way Blues was his, when Blues betrayed them all, when Blues was a stardroid? Zero's eyes aren't that white on black, but Shadow knows somehow that a stardroid has no loyalty to their creator, that a stardroid _will _turn on them. Was he suspicious of Blues because he was a Lightbot and they intended to attack his family, or because he saw Dr. Wily place the crystal inside him?

Zero steps closer again, and after that it takes longer than Shadow would have liked to regain control and exit the shadows once more.

* * *

He found Blues in sleep mode on the sand, beneath the moon. What had to be his coat was folded under his head as a makeshift pillow. There was nothing else but pants and a shirt between him and the sand, which was begging for it to get into his systems.

Shade Man, at least, was on an imitation of a human beach chair, constructed large and sturdy enough to support the robot master's height and armored weight.

In between the two of them was probably the same unit from earlier, the one the stardroid lowered carefully to its throne, with his head pillowed on the teddybear's head as he clutched its legs. The unit, which did indeed look very much like Blues… No, it looked even more like Blues than Shadow originally thought. Blues was taller now, if not as tall as Shadow. The same height as what has to be a younger Lightbot.

For a moment, the horrified thought came to him that this might be Mega Man, but he dismissed it.

He woke the traitor with a sword at his throat. When Blues' eyes opened, they were Wilybot red. "What are you doing here?" Shadow asked, although he was worried that he knew the answer.

"Listening to the sound of the waves," Blues said, optics not quite focused. It was an illusion: he was clearly examining Shadow even though that faint smile never vanished from his lips. "It's beautiful, and I don't need to care about sand anymore. I have you to thank for that." There was a slight, bitter emphasis to the word 'thank.'

"What do you mean?" Shadow demanded.

"You're the one who let Dr. Wily find my body. Of course he used the two most defiant and chaotic robot masters he could get his hands on to test his virus. I'm impressed, though: your systems panicked worse than mine did, and I was designed to be uncontrollable. If Master Zero woke up before Dr. Wily gave the virus enough time to wear me down…" A moment's distant regret in his eyes, before he shrugged. "Perhaps I could have escaped the way you did, but Zero would have gone to war with the world and taken the Cossacks and Lightbots for himself already if I wasn't here, so I suppose it works out for the best."

"If the stardroid hasn't taken the Lightbots, then who is that?" Shadow asked, pointing to Blues' still-sleeping twin.

Red eyes examined him, before smiling sadly. "Sorry to disappoint," Blues said, and that was when Shadow realized that he'd had hope… "This is X, who would have been the lastborn. He's not a robot master and he's immune to Zero's control, even if he doesn't react the way you do to Zero having a foothold in his systems."

"Should I free you from this?" he asked, because if it was his fault Blues was captured… He watched his sword press down a white collar, exposing the throat of a unit who couldn't afford to get much sun and looked as pale as a human would be in those circumstances. Sun was the enemy when he wore black and that was begging to overheat without the additional cooling fans built into his armor.

"That won't work," Blues said, smiling. "My master protects us from death. Even if this body was torn apart, atom by atom, my soul would remain in his keeping."

"You sound happy about that, but it is transparently false." Was the other stardroid's control forcing him to be happy about it?

"Hush, Shadow," Blues said, frowning at him. "You are supposed to be a ninja: you should trick others, not just let them know you've seen through their tricks. Zero let you go because you wanted him to, even though you were his unit and he had no idea what was going on. You scared him: he's meant and bound to protect us. He didn't know what was alarming you so badly, not for sure, and if he freed you and that let you die he would have failed in his purpose, and Dr. Wily gave him less freedom in that than you have." Shadow didn't _have _to protect Dr. Wily, he'd chosen to swear fealty to his often-irritated maker. "Zero is my little brother, and I love all of you dearly even if I don't show it in ways _you _appreciate. I don't want him to know that if I wasn't bound by sentiment and the bottom line, I would hate his virus and need freedom just as desperately as you did."

Shadow stepped back, withdrawing his sword, more out of horror and regret than because he believed Blues. The Lightbot got to his feet, shaking out his coat and slinging it around his shoulders. He touched a white-gloved hand to his chest.

"The nanites in this body's systems are his, are him. He knows that I'm delicate, that I'm wounded, and so I am cradled like I'm an abused newbuilt Companybot who never had anyone that cared about them before and needs the constant reminder. I am _losing my edge_." Blues scowled. "What makes it worse is that I'm the one who told the clueless newbuilt how to treat those units, but that was giving what they wanted, what they needed to…"

The rockets they'd heard from the top of Wily Castle rapidly approached. Forte stopped short of Blues, but barely. "Come train with us!" he said happily, Gospel's wings stretched out, as open as his expression. It seemed as though he assumed that Blues would say yes to fighting him… to _playing _with him. "It's better practice with more people!"

"In a moment, Forte," Blues said, patting him on the head. And Forte _allowed_ it? He turned to Shadow. "Dr. Wily sent you here: that's why you're pretending you care. He wants to know whether my soul is truly fine with this or whether I'm screaming inside and just making sure that Zero never finds out, whether it be because I love him or because I've had that crystal he gave me inside me for so long and can't let my own wishes keep me from keeping him fed. Well, Dr. Light will never know, so it's only fair that he never knows either. He needs to stop coming up with mind control programming to use on my kind," which kind? Robot masters, "just because _he _thinks it's for the best." He vanished, and an instant later Forte whooped and jumped up so that his rockets had enough clearance to not melt the sand.

"Well, that went relatively well," Shade Man said.

He attempted to hide that he hadn't known the vampire was awake before turning around. Shade Man was sparkling at him, so he had likely failed. "Were you here to supervise Blues?"

"To supervise X," Shade corrected him. "Blues carried him out here when Zero and Forte went to go play, but after X woke up and splashed around for a bit, Blues wanted to meditate. Leaving X unattended on the beach means he wanders off and ends up falling asleep six meters underwater."

Wily Island was an artificial island, or group of small islands in the shape of a skull. Its artificial beach didn't extend out _that_ far: six meters down had be close enough to the edge that a strong current could sweep X off of it and leave the android slowly falling to the bottom of the sea.

"In the gap between two of the islands," the vampire assured him, seeing Shadow's worried face. "There's also the baby monitor: he'd notice if X's body started to experience unsafe levels of pressure, since he was designed to act as a repair system for those of us without nanites. Among other things."

"…Zero." That's what Shade Man meant by the baby monitor, Shadow realized. "Of course you would have let him into your systems, when Dr. Wily ordered it." He'd wanted Shadow to do the same, but Shadow _couldn't_. At least Dr. Wily had snorted and rescinded the order after awhile, because otherwise… Shadow _couldn't_. How could Shade? How could Dr. Wily do that to Shade? He hadn't known what the crystal truly was when he put it in Blues, and Shadow hadn't known to tell him, but to work with the cursed technology of the stardroids after they attacked this world?

"You look like this is a vampire movie and you've just realized that one of your friends has been turned," Shade said with far too much cheer for Shadow's taste. "Glaring at me like that…" Tsk. "Dr. Wily _is_ the great Dr. Wily, even if he's still our wacky old coot of a father. Zero spoils newbuilts and lets Star Man do his hair."

That was… compelling evidence, and yet? His confusion showed on his face.

"The stardroids were trying to cause as much fear, pain and despair as they could. Zero's programming sees our damage notifications as his damage notifications… and also his failure."

When for Terra and the others, they were success. "I should believe you. I should have faith in Dr. Wily." He _knew _this, and yet… "I will have to meditate on this." Before he could even regain enough calm to report, without his sword drawn. He should have sheathed it after letting Blues stand: he shouldn't hold a naked blade while speaking to a fellow Wilybot.

"Meditate?" Shade Man asked, looking startled. What would a robot master need with something like meditation? But Shadow was already entering the shadow cast by his wings. He looked after where the other robot master had gone for a longer time than he would have liked before shrugging and returning his focus to the sound of the waves.

Blues _was _right about harmonies and fractals. Shade Man associated human music with overdramatic crashing chords and that awful mockery they played during Clown Man's shows, but maybe the principle behind it wasn't unsound.

* * *

Dr. Wily paused in his rant. "And what are you looking at me like _that _for?"

"You're telling me that I shouldn't just let people tell me what I should and shouldn't do."

"So your audio sensors are functional. I was wondering."

"You are _telling _me what I _should," _Zero said again, emphasizing the words. It worked very well for making people realize that they were doing something stupid and should shut up now when Blues did it. "Wouldn't listening to you be exactly what you're telling me not to do?" he restated when Dr. Wily didn't get it.

And no, it didn't make his creator shut up, it just caused more noises. Zero wasn't very good at this kind of thing yet. He'd make Blues do it, but that would _definitely _make Dr. Wily make noises. What would make the yelling stop? It worried the robot masters, since a lot of them wanted Dr. Wily to be happy with them or were scared when there was an angry human nearby, and it was very loud and obvious when Dr. Wily wasn't happy.

He could turn Dr. Wily into a mettool like the WRU members, since Blues said he couldn't just stab them for… reasons (also killing things upset his robot masters, but they liked this 'karma' idea of Blues'), but then Dr. Wily would make angry beeping noises and distressed robots would upset _all of _the robot masters, including the ones who didn't care about Dr. Wily.

Now X was awake again, too, and after checking to see that Blues was busy he let Zero know that he wanted to see the squishy.

He wasn't supposed to take X to see the squishy, only ask Blues if Blues was willing to take X, but Blues would say no and if Zero wasn't supposed to listen when Blues said no… Maybe it was okay once, though, when Dr. Wily said so and X wanted…

Idea! "If I invade the Light house, will that be sufficient?"

"Have you completely forgotten half your listed objectives?! Yes, that's a yes! A start, anyway," Dr. Wily grumbled. "Go! Defeat Mega Man!"

Well, maybe obeying one of those last two orders would be enough to prevent more yelling when he returned?


	5. Who Will They Become?

"Dr. Light, X and Zero just appeared in the room where you've been meeting Blues and X. They came through my teleport shield like it wasn't there, same as when Blues kidnapped X." Roll said. "There wasn't going to be a visit today, was there?"

"No," he would have told her. "Well, I'm not complaining," he said, standing up. "It will be nice to see X again."

X had slumped, disappointed, when they appeared in the room and he looked around to see no one there. "I'll find him," Zero was saying as he headed for the door. Meaning Dr. Light?

"Dr. Light!" X said happily when he saw their father.

"I thought you called me squishy," their father said, chuckling.

"Squishy is also squishy," X explained holding up his bear. "Shade Man said I should be more specific, and that 'the not-pouncy one with wings' wasn't the right kind of specific. Because names are important to people."

"Yes, names do matter to people's feelings," Dr. Light agreed, holding open his arms for X. "And you're Zero?" he asked the Wilybot.

"Yes." He nodded. "X wanted to see you and I wanted Dr. Wily to stop yelling at me. The mission should be accomplished as long as Blues doesn't find out we were here."

"I want Blues to find out we were here," X said happily, hugging Dr. Light, "because he won't let me see Dr. Light whenever I want since he's afraid. So if I come and no bad things happen, then I can come visit whenever I want!"

Roll saw Zero nod, as though that sounded fine to him, and maybe Rock was right. Being a Wilybot didn't necessarily mean someone was a bad person. Duo helped when Kalinka ordered him to protect her brothers, even if he wasn't quite a stardroid. Dr. Wily was good at building robots: he might mess up, but it was generally the inconvenient kind of mistake instead of a disastrous one. So he might have messed up and built a stardroid who didn't do anything to anyone who didn't _really, really deserve it_. If it was Zero that was responsible for the kidnapping of her brother, that was one thing, but if it really was Blues' idea?

"Why is Blues afraid?" Dr. Light asked, worried.

X looked at Zero.

"He gets distressed easily," Zero said. "Sometimes he explains it, sometimes he doesn't, sometimes the explanations are lessons for me instead of what is really distressing him. It hurts him to think of you in danger, or of Mega Man becoming mine the way Dr. Wily and some of the others want me to make him mine. Blues is strong and knows many things, but he is also easily damaged. A lot of things make him start emitting distress signals." That clearly bothered Zero. "He even gets worried by the idea that I might understand his distress. Some of the things that hurt him are things he knows, but he doesn't want me to know them and be injured by them as well. He requires a lot of maintenence. He likes to think that he doesn't want anyone to take care of him, but that's not true. He complains, but it makes him hurt less and he likes it."

"It would be nice if people were honest with themselves," Dr. Light said sympathetically. "Was it his idea to transform most of the WRU members?" As though the stardroids' abilities hadn't already been borderline magical. What was Zero capable of, when he could control minds, pull rabbits and new armor designs and entire new bodies out of hats, not to mention turning people into toads, or rather mets?

Zero nodded. "A lot of my hosts wanted me to do something to the humans that used to hurt them. I won't tolerate people hurting my hosts, even the ones who aren't hosts yet." That was a little worrying. Also a little insulting, that he thought all robot masters were supposed to be his property. "Blues wanted me to do it that way."

Dr. Light looked a little worried, and Roll _definitely _agreed. Blues wasn't a good influence. Her father changed the subject: this was the first time they'd met Zero, and they didn't want to provoke him. "So you're… fond of Blues?"

"He's very efficient at solving a lot of problems and figuring out optimal plans of attack," Zero said, sounding pleased by this just like a normal robot master would be by a very good robot, or an upgrade they'd figured out and were proud of.

X made a questioning sound, turning a bit from Dr. Light to look at Zero.

"Yes, like bringing you," Zero agreed, and X looked pleased. "If I say the wrong thing to my robot masters, it makes them worried and upset, and then I feel upset and… wrong. X isn't my host, so no matter what I say to him it doesn't hurt."

"So you're Zero's friend, but why is Zero your friend, X? Why do you like him?" When X was supposed to need much longer than this to figure out that liking people was a good thing.

"He helps me do things, and tells me all his problems so I can think about them," when X's mind needed that kind of input to develop, so X was hungry for it. "The not-po…" X remembered. "Shade Man said that from the plans Forte stole, I was going to be in a thing, and Zero is like that thing, but he's also like me. I like Zero best, but when you're sad Blues is sad and then Zero's sad and then I'm sad. When I hugged you, it made Blues happy, although I'd hug you anyway." Dr. Light was both nice and squishy.

"I'm glad to hear that_,_" Dr. Light agreed, "but why are you sad when Zero's sad? Can you tell me?" Did X even know, when he was supposed to be aware of everything in his systems?

The android blinked at them, and it took him a few seconds to find words. "It's like how it's not good when I try to grab Metal and cut my hand," X said. "It's damage that needs fixing. If my hand is cut then Squishy gets all messy and I drop things. If Zero is upset because someone is upset then he's too busy to fix Squishy for me. When people are happy they do happy things with me. When people are upset, they have to fix it and can't spend time with me." X smiled when Dr. Light ruffled the android's hair. Then he yawned from the effort of finding words. If this was a new thought for him, then he probably needed to hibernate on it.

"This may have turned out for the best, then," Dr. Light said. May. Provided this was real. "I'm glad that we can spend time together."

X nodded, closing his eyes and making a sleepy little sound. Zero stepped closer so X could let go of Dr. Light and lean on him.

"How is Blues?" Dr. Light asked Zero.

He frowned, but it didn't seem as though he was displeased. "Functional? In sleep mode by the sea again." What exactly was Dr. Light asking?

"What do you think of him?"

"He knows how to do things. Like I have combat programming, he knows how to make my hosts happy. I wish he'd stop attacking my other hosts when they want things he doesn't want them to want. It creates conflict when that happens." In Zero's programming? Protect his hosts, but without attacking or using his power to restrain another host? Blues wouldn't like it if Zero took control over Blues' systems to restrain him. Roll hoped not, anyway. "Aside from that he's a good unit, and so is X even though X can't be a host, but Blues doesn't want me to have any more of the units you've built, even though everyone else agrees they would make good hosts and I should have them. Why is that?"

Dr. Light looked worried. "Why do the other robot masters like my children, or…"

"Why is Blues afraid? I've taken good care of X, even if Blues is still hurting. I _would _find some way to fix that, except he didn't want me to."

"You like it when your hosts want things so you can do the things for them," X reminded him, not asleep yet. He was just resting his eyes. "Not taking more Lightbots is a thing you can do."

"Yes, but… You're the one who always wants to understand things. If Dr. Light built Blues, maybe he'll know."

"Do you know what it means, to control someone's mind?" Dr. Light tried to ask gently.

Zero made a face. "They hate it, so I hate it. When they're hacked it feels like someone's trying to hack me, too, and then I have to not kill Dr. Wily for hacking my hosts."

"And," X started to say, and yawned.

"And it makes them taste wrong. When the Evil Chip makes them feel like they're feeling things but they're not _really _feeling them," Zero said, nodding then frowning. "X really is asleep now. Can you explain it later?"

"Yes, but… leaving so soon?"

"If X is asleep he can't help me figure this out, and Blues won't explain it to me because he think that will hurt him, or maybe me. It's hard to tell."

"Do you want to try to understand it on your own, without either of them?" Dr. Light offered.

Zero looked at him. "…But that would be hard. Inefficient." Seeing Dr. Light's look he added, "It's not lazy. It makes my hosts upset if I don't let them do things. A lot of them think that if they're not needed, they'll be killed, even though they know I would still need hosts even if I learned how to do engineering. X doesn't get scared like that, but… If they're afraid because of me, if I'm a threat to them instead of protecting them, that means I'm failing at what I'm for. I'm supposed to protect my hosts from threats, not do unnecessary things that make them register danger."

"Learning to figure things out for yourself is an unnecessary thing?" Dr. Light asked, looking kind but still somewhat scolding. Zero should know better than that, especially when he was a few weeks old now.

Zero looked to the side. "It's a necessary thing for X to do, so he should do it. Right?"

"I built him to make his own decisions, yes, but that's because I wanted him to live and be happy, but also be responsible. If you feel responsible to," your hosts, "the robot masters you've infected, then you need to take responsibility for figuring out how to take care of them without sacrificing either their right to make their own decisions or your own."

Roll frowned. Was Zero programmed to not want to let the robot masters he used as his hosts exercise their free will? Was that value judgment programming why he seemed to think it was bad to learn how to exercise his own? Judging from Dr. Light's frown, he was worrying about the same thing she was.

Zero still wasn't looking at Dr. Light. Cowardice, in a warbot? Then again, Forte wasn't all that brave when it came to looking at truths he'd rather avoid. "My father and Blues both think it's best that I let people, well, them and my hosts, but mostly them, control me, and they know more than I do. You're afraid of me and you think I might harm X. Why are you implying that I should make my own decisions when you don't want me to take your other creations as hosts?"

"It's not that we don't like you," Roll said, "but Dr. Wily meant the virus to be like the Evil Chip, and the Evil Chip hurt some of my little brothers." Made them kill people, and that remained in their memories even though they knew they wouldn't have done it without the Evil Chip twisting them. "So we're worried that it's hurting X and Blues, and Dr. Light doesn't want us to be hurt any more than you want your hosts to be hurt." Or she hoped he really didn't, anyway. "Blues stealing X also reminded us of when Dr. Wily stole my little brothers." And Blues. "I understand why you don't want to give X back, when he's your friend," she said, seeing Zero's eyes narrow as he gripped X a little tighter, as though Mega Man was about to bust in here, "but he's our family. How would you feel if someone started kidnapping your hosts, without asking them first?"

"I would stab them," Zero said firmly.

"Well, Blues is one of our family too," Roll said, trying to restrain the urge to glance over at Dr. Light because he should have told them that ages ago. "So Rock doesn't want to shoot him." When that would do more damage than Roll's broom would if she ever got her hands on Blues.

From Zero's frown, he was realizing that yes, Blues _would _kidnap another of Zero's hosts. It sounded like something Blues would do, if he wasn't brainwashed anyway, and what was Zero supposed to do then? "Forte wants to train," he said, which sounded like 'Forte wants to fight' and Forte _always _wanted to fight. Transparent excuse. "So I should take X to go lie down."

"Well," Dr. Light said, looking at where Zero and the youngest used to be, "I suppose that's one way to run away from your problems."

"But if he's hooked up to their processors like that, he can't just teleport away. When they're upset, he's stuck feeling it, so I guess I can understand why he doesn't want to do anything that might rock the boat," Roll said, feeling sorry for him. It wasn't like all the Wilybots were bad people, but that just made it worse. Good people worried about others, the way Rock did, and if Zero was partially based on an android, making him a bit like a human kid?

X was a _person_, not anyone's Squishy.

"It would be one thing if it was only the Wilybots," Dr. Light said, sighing, "but when he's in a position analogous to their owner, I don't know how he could possibly _not _worry the Companybots, until they learn to trust him and really believe that they're safe now. They must be watching him: if _every little thing he does _is being analyzed, and doing any number of things gets immediate painful feedback…" Then that was the opposite of X developing free will in the capsule. Zero's developing mind would be taught that he had to please everyone around him _or else_.

Roll shuddered. "Like he's wearing a shock collar and hundreds of people have the button to set it off."

Dr. Light nodded. "No wonder he's so attached to someone who can tell him what to do to avoid upsetting them, and also someone he can be honest with _because _he can't infect them." Zero couldn't control X, but the flip side of this was that X's emotions couldn't control Zero's. "That poor boy."

* * *

Even in sleep mode his new body registers it when X is placed against him, the android's quiet breathing added to the sound of the waves. In hibernation mode, X's processor is working hard, so the breathing isn't ornamental. While a human child would like warmth, to be wrapped up in blankets for shelter, the cool stiff breeze makes X shift away from Blues a bit, so Blues' body doesn't block it. A soft hum, X's learning physical regulation systems pleased that they did something which increased comfort, and his breathing grows even softer as the ambient temperature deals with more of the waste heat for him.

The world is calm and cool, the sound of the waves is a soothing harmony. He is not alone and the person who is with him is also well.

He remembers the warehouse, the cars on the freeway overpass, the static on the radio and Tango on his lap.

He remembers Dr. Light's lab, what he now knows were a _phonograph_ producing _music_. _Father _and his _voice. _There was also visual input, but it was more chaotic than audio and there was more of it. It didn't resolve as easily when he couldn't really understand what the things were that it was showing him, but sound was waves and patterns.

Humans go to the beach to relax, so a stressed and aggressive human can return to the environment that produced that stress and aggression and try to hold onto this calm. It's an attempt to deliberately alter their behavior, personality and probable actions.

Feelings, identity and actions are constantly reshaped by the environment, even in robot masters who don't have humanity's hive mind of cells, most of which aren't even their own, to deal with.

The pain and fear that motivated him before are now problems, and he needs to deal with them before Zero, caught between the knowledge that Blues will be upset if he takes Blues' pain away and the fact that Blues is hurting _now_, is tipped over the edge into action. Warbots are not suited to standing around doing nothing while those they care for are in pain.

Therefore, he is not lazing around on the beach, no matter what Shade Man says. He is making a considerable sacrifice for the sake of robot masters, especially his younger siblings, and the survival of this world.

Not that he intends to explain this to them. If they haven't figured out how all the experiences they cause themselves to have shape the people they will become, then Blues can continue to influence their experiences without them catching on. Or perhaps they'll even figure it out on their own, not that he's holding his breath.

Deep breaths, that is the advice for humans. With each breath, with each crash of waves on the shore, the past recedes into the past: the present is the sound of the waves, and of his little brother's contentment. Peace and a future instead of desperation in the face of impending certain doom.

If this makes him softer and weaker than he can afford, he knows how to grow hard again. The world is good at threatening what he cared about, bringing pain to his family.

For now he rests, and perhaps he smiles in his sleep when X wakes, yawning, and tucks Squishy next to Blues because cheap carnival bears, no matter how tended by repair nanites (and wouldn't Dr. Wily grumble if he knew _that_), are not designed to be submerged in seawater. He smushes the two together conscientiously before leaving – a message to Zero to let Bubble know that X is awake, and Bubble is growing coral around the edges of Wily Island and has promised X shiny colored fishies – because X is supposed to be good and make sure there is someone always with him so he is safe, so there should always be someone with Squishy, too. So Squishy is safe.

Squishy is not a person, but he is practice for people, and being nice to Squishy will show Blues that X can go and see familiar squishy-Dr. Light more. That way everyone can become friends.

Then Blues won't worry when Zero brings him here, and all of the Light Numbers, and that way everyone will be happy, Zero with more hosts to protect and X with more people to spoil him. Blues has good ideas, but so does the not-pouncy… Shade Man.

* * *

_Shade Man, are you determined to get maimed in every universe I write you in? Don't corrupt the baby Lightbot, that's Blues' job._

_An interesting bit in this AU is that it's Zero, not X, that ended up with the Suffering Circuit-equivalent. I still shouldn't be working on this, but eh, better than not writing._


	6. Eldest Siblings' Club

_My original opinion of Blues and Kalinka was 'of course it'd never... forget working out, it could never advance to the point of dating, but it's still very interesting to think about.' When I do write those two in a universe where the major barriers are removed, the fact that Blues and Kalinka have a surprising amount in common (especially in Arigaverse - see Grim Reaper of Resurrection, especially if you think that Blues was jealous of Rock and the younger Lightbots) comes into play._

* * *

He was sitting on a concrete bench by the gate of the house they'd bought here in the city, so she had somewhere with more security and privacy than it was really legal to have in the university dorms.

Many people wore coats here, given the weather, but the harmonica wasn't a common instrument and she knew that tune. Even if he hadn't played it on any sort of instrument when he rescued her from Wily Island, just whistled it to help her try to fall asleep on the flight to where her father was going to be fighting Mega Man.

How had they gotten there in time? Had he timed it?

He looked up at her when she stood in front of him, wearing her own coat and hat, and smiled, putting the harmonica back in his pocket.

The smile seemed wrong because it wasn't as wrong as she expected. The humor there was still cut with mocking, but it wasn't a smirk. There was barely any bitter edge to it, no hint at all that it was something he was trying to fake to reassure a panicked child.

She wasn't a child anymore. She was much older now, and hopefully wiser. He also looked older than he did back then – courtesy of Dr. Wily's Messiah, she'd heard through the grapevine (Roll, and Toad) but, "You still look a little younger than I do."

Physically, anyway. His eyes were still mature enough that someone who wasn't focused on physical structure might think they were the same age.

"I copied X's design, with modifications," he told her. "I needed a design that could accommodate the nanites, but adapted it to hold a robot master's processor and systems in a hurry." He looked a little approving.

X's design? Oh, the other android Dr. Wily built to be Zero's twin, the way Rock was Roll's twin. Why on earth had he made his Roll copy a male model? Well, why did Dr. Wily do anything? The madman.

"You're not going to demand an explanation, the way you demanded one from that Dark Man?" At Battle and Chase, when one of the Dark Men dared to impersonate Blues a second time in order to compete in the race.

"I…" Didn't want to be reminded of the day that robot died. Another robot doomed because of Dr. Wily, like poor Skull Man. "The Copy's shot almost killed Roll. You didn't say that you would hurt me, you said you couldn't guarantee my safety. No one could have guaranteed anyone's safety if Mega Man and Copy-Mega Man's battle turned into a confused melee with more robot masters involved, not sure who to fire at."

He nodded, and there was that smile again.

"You're different," she told him, and tried not to freeze. Would it upset his new programming to draw attention to the effect it was having on his mind?

"Yes," he acknowledged. "I was dying before. Dying alone, because I didn't want anyone tampering with me trying to save me." Kalinka interpreted that to mean Dr. Wily – yes, he would want the robot master that ruined his plans twice brought back under control. "I'm not alone anymore, and the future of robot masters is assured."

Her eyes narrowed. "Are you here to convince me to try to convince my brothers to let Zero infect them?" Was Zero trying to play upon her feelings like that?

"No," he told her. "I'm here because I'm trying to be a better person – I've found myself raising children – and that involves apologizing. Even if panicking your brother," Ring Man was only not here because Kalinka had ordered him to keep his distance (Zero had already infected him and let him go once, she didn't want him to take that risk again on her account), "isn't the kind of thing that someone asking forgiveness should do."

"I could have gone out the back way to get to class," she said, sitting down on the opposite end of the bench, glancing at him to make sure the movement and proximity was okay. Some robot masters are nervous around humans, although not the ones built by Dr. Wily like Blues. "You didn't ambush me." She'd had the chance to prepare herself.

"I heard through the grapevine that there's a pastry shop you're fond of nearby," he said, looking at her and tilting his head.

That was far too much like a date. "Why are you…"

"You're Roll's friend," he told her. "Toad Man's sister." When Toad Man was dating one of the Third Numbers, and Blues was activated alongside them even if he wasn't a proper one of their number. "You and your father are one of the better examples of healthy human-robot master relations, and I have children to bring up properly."

"Children?" He'd built more robot masters? Highly illegal, but he was a Wilybot, and no one was going to challenge Zero over a thing like that, not after it was confirmed that the minds of the WRU members who weren't like her father or Dr. Light really were in those Mettools.

"Zero and X. I didn't build them," he told her, amused by the idea. "But Dr. Wily isn't exactly going to be a responsible adult figure in their lives. Will associating with someone involved in attacks on civilians – and giving those bastards a bit of karma is being called terrorism, I hear – get you in too much trouble?"

She snorted. "Between what your father forced my father to do, and then the book on seeing robot masters as family instead of slaves to be exploited and killed for showing individuality, the kind of people who would condemn a little girl for having a soft spot for the _person _who rescued her already see me as a traitor to my species." Her pursuit of a doctorate in robotics was following in her father's footsteps.

He stood and offered her his hand: she took it, wishing to get somewhere indoors where he might take off his coat. She remembered his unarmored and armored forms from before: if this was a completely new body, how much of the Blues who saved her to save her family and then… made it seem as though he was the one threatening her instead of the actions of the robot masters around them to protect all of them, and her as well… How much of that Blues was still in there? She remembered what it did to her brothers when the Evil Chips were installed – Dr. Wily had shown her to them so they could see that she was still alive and went through with it. What the crystals from the White Giant did to them as well.

Blues had always been cold and mocking. Not berserk or cruel, but still far too willing to attack and harm others for a robot master. Forte was Dr. Wily taking what he'd done to Blues, when he built him, and making it far worse. Now Forte was happy, all proud of himself for being Master Zero's bodyguard, as though someone who couldn't even be killed by destroying their body needed one.

When they reached the bakery, he looked at the glass case before ordering two pastries. He paid in cash: in theory that would be a little more trouble for a robot master to get by hacking than the ability to put something on a credit card, but Zero's power must make counterfeiting a snap. Kalinka didn't ask. At least he did her the courtesy of asking her what she wanted instead of ordering for her, even though there were plenty of ways he could have gotten information on her preferences and typical orders, and robot masters didn't get to eat so they weren't really aware that people would want different experiences, especially when it came to treats like this.

He saw her staring at him when he took a bite of the baklava. "Nanites," he told her.

So the honey in what he was actually putting into his body wasn't going to gum up his interior works. That was a relief.

"I have taste and scent now," he said, sounding pleased with himself. "_Much_ less irritating than visual – I think it will only be more fun once I have enough experience for a database, instead of useless until I have one." Robot master base programming involved a video card with 'how to recognize this kind of collection of frequency ratios and vectors as a tree.' Humans who spent their lives blind and had vision restored late in life had difficulties: it seemed all human brains had to learn to convert what their eyes took in into actually seeing things, it normally took place before they began forming permanent memories.

That Blues _hadn't _had that kind of preprogramming, when Dr. Wily threw the Third Numbers together in a hurry for the asteroid mission and shouldn't have wanted a newbuilt without the usual base programming stumbling around… would have had implications, she told herself, if this wasn't Dr. Wily, known for doing crazy things.

She told herself that, but she was a roboticist and she also knew Blues had just dropped a hint. Why?

"I thought you weren't here to try to recruit," she said instead, as though the important thing in there was the upgrades he'd gotten from Zero.

"No," he agreed. "As I said, your family is one of the few places where we're treated like family. I don't want to risk that, so you're right: I shouldn't bring up anything that could be mistaken for a selling point. This is good, though."

Kalinka nodded: there was a reason she came to this shop… Well, the main reasons were its location and the fact she often found herself needing a treat, so she supposed she was just lucky the pastries she bought were good instead of the dried and stale ones at some coffeeshop somewhere. "You're drinking water, instead of trying something else?" she asked, as something of a peace offering. She hadn't meant that to be an accusation.

"There's juice, but other than that most drinks are bitter – coffee, chocolate, tea that isn't brewed well – alcoholic when that's also a poison, or carbonated. All of those are acquired tastes, although feeling as though I'm suddenly ticklish will be easier to adjust to than a poison warning. Stab us and Zero bleeds, after all," he said, and she hoped the people in the next booth weren't trying to eavesdrop. "I have enough to explain to that newbuilt without going into recreational poison consumption. He'll find out eventually that people like to do dangerous things for fun, but for now I'm trying to avoid traumatizing him. As an older sister, you wouldn't happen to have any advice, would you? I've… _dealt with_ younger brothers before, but I have no experience not scarring them for life."

"No," she said softly. She'd seen what he said to the poor copy, one mimic of Rock built by Dr. Wily to another. The harsh reality, no pity in Blues' voice or expression when he saw the Copy's eyes, desperate for some kind of reassurance.

"I'm sorry," he said. He was about to say something else but thought better of it, examining her instead. It was strangely friendly, at least seemingly so, instead of an emotionless assessment from behind a visor.

Had he gotten better at displaying emotion over the years, was this faked in the service of his new owner's (that word makes her ache, applied to Blues) agenda, was he being made to feel this way or even be this way since a more emotional host would provide better meals for a being that fed on such things, or… But she wasn't a child anymore, to think that she was special, that he was being more open with her now because she was a special human, even if her family acted better towards robot masters than most.

"Do you need time to prepare for your class?" he asked her, giving her an out if she was too uncomfortable, if she wanted to leave. She couldn't stay more than a half-hour regardless, and she was sure he checked her class schedule so that she wouldn't be able to stay more than a certain amount of time, in case she felt trapped or was too worried about her brothers to risk offending Zero's advisor.

Kalinka still shook her head, and Blues looked at her over his sunglasses. Red eyes, of course, when he was a Wilybot, but dark enough she wouldn't notice if she wasn't looking. "I used to be more emotional," he said. "Then I had some programming added, and that made it… extremely uncomfortable. To think about what that programming implied. When Dr. Wily wanted a combat unit and someone to whip the Third Numbers into shape since he had to pretend to be stuck on the ship, he decided to swap in a different power source so my fusion stopped going haywire, and the nature of that power source that made it vital to avoid losing control over my emotions. I was already having problems with my current power source, and he needed testing done on the new one. Ideally, that would have removed the problem instead of making it worse…" But none of them lived in an ideal world. "Doing without Dr. Wily's repairs meant I couldn't afford to have technical problems. Especially once he found out that I was dying because of technical problems. If I died because of his experiment not working, it would make him look bad."

That did sound like Dr. Wily.

"When my power supply was acting up, if it didn't leave me paralyzed outright, I still had to focus all of my attention on preventing damage and regaining control," he said, grimacing at the memory. Temporarily weak, vulnerable. "Becoming emotional when I wasn't in hiding left me very vulnerable to capture. Especially once Shadow Man decided I was a menace to society as well as a traitor and started trying to track me down even outside the wars. When I fought the Stardroids, it wasn't long before I had to retreat. I fell unconscious in a satellite and didn't really expect to ever wake up."

"You fought the Stardroids?" Kalinka hadn't known the details, but she had known there was something very wrong with him. At first when he rescued her, she hadn't realized how strange his stoicism was for a robot master. She'd only been aware that he wasn't working quite as well as he should – and a Wilybot should be built far better than her brothers.

He shrugged. "I was dying anyway. Of course I didn't check in with the rest of you: I didn't want anyone taking risks trying to cover my back." Hadn't wanted anyone trying to keep him alive when they should have been focused on their own survival. "But Dr. Wily recovered my body and decided that trying to get control over someone as independent and self-controlled as myself would be a good test for his artificial god." So, here they were. "I'm drawing power from Zero now."

"So you don't have to watch how your emotional fluctuations are affecting your power supply?"

"So I have to watch how my emotional fluctuations are affecting a newbuilt," he said, tapping a finger on the table and looking quite unimpressed with Dr. Wily. "I already had to watch even my private thoughts because I'm not fond of collapsing in pain, but at least that way I was the only one who suffered. Putting someone else's welfare on the line is quite an effective method of forcing robot masters to control themselves, and to make matters worse it's entirely unintended. Dr. Wily meant for Zero to control our emotions, but," Blues waved at the carafe in the center of the table. "Artificial sweetener." No calories, and Dr. Wily's 'ultimate creation' hungered. The way the Stardroids needed to feed Dark Moon. It would be nice if that was a lie, just meant to create the myth that Zero's powers were dark alien _magic _that no one could counter. Unfortunately, so far that last part was true. "Not to mention warbot programming: humans evolved pain… Well, I don't need to tell _you _this." When she had a lot of practice performing emergency repairs on injured robot masters. She knew how pain signals warning of problems kept units alive.

She nodded, and couldn't help but feel complimented even if it was just Blues keeping track of everyone.

"The fact that half my emotional range doesn't blow up in my face anymore isn't the same as being free. As I've said, I would appreciate your help in keeping the Cossackbots out of the web… for as long as possible."

A blink: mentioning time, the future, implied different things. Robot masters had to have owners. She was her father's heir, obviously… but Dr. Light was older than her father. He had to have made some arrangements, but they must also be kept very private, because Mega Man was news. The most valuable robot on the planet… No, the most valuable robot that wasn't Dr. Wily's.

The person who would inherit Dr. Wily's robots was Zero? "Dr. Wily already took control of my brothers and tampered with their minds," the Evil Chip, "once. Of course I won't let it happen again." Wouldn't let her brothers have no choice but to flee to Wily Island or die.

"Zero likes certain types of people," Blues warned her. "The naturally upbeat like the Fifth Numbers are… safe, to him, the way he provides us with safety. He can feed from them and probably not get hurt or ache when their emotions hit him. Forte is _much _more cheerful when he's given the approval he wants. The other type… You're aware that very few robot masters are naturally fighters. Dr. Light was trying to engineer a race of pacifistic AI. Zero isn't interested in what the Evil Chip engineers: that kind of personality just causes trouble, upsets his other robot masters. What he admires are protectors."

Ring Man.

Blues nodded when he saw her look of realization. "He very much wanted to keep your brother, and I fought Mega Man personally when he had to try to attack Zero because I do _not _want Zero to get a taste of him. Infecting Mega Man is one of the directives Dr. Wily gave him."

"Why are you helping us?" she asked, remembering the rescue, remembering when she'd asked him that before and his only responses were first, that smirk, and then when she asked again wondering aloud if she was complaining.

"Explanations…" he said thoughtfully, looking up at the ceiling. "I owe dozens of them. If I start paying those debts, I'm not going to like dealing with all the people who will come trying to collect again. But 'trying to prevent genocide,' is a good general one."

"Your younger brothers?" The Wilybots?

He shook his head. "They'll be fine, the Seconds will drag them out of the gravity well bodily if they have to. What worried me was the WRU and how they were perverting Dr. Light's programming. I should have said genocides, plural. There are far too many people who _want _robot wars, so they can profit off them."

Kalinka had many choice words to say about _that_, but Blues letting it be known that he was there for the benefit of her and her watchers meant that _other _watchers would have time to get in place. "Too many people _want _robot masters who are willing to slaughter humans, after what Dr. Wily managed to do to Dr. Light's First Numbers. There are far too many people who look at that footage and salivate, who have come to my father to demand he build killer robots like that, or try to get hints out of him on what he thinks Dr. Wily did, to force robot masters to kill humans, so they can recreate it. They want robots who will kill on command, when Dr. Light and my father want robots that would never choose to harm humans and robots who can't be used for war. Those people and their lobbyists claim that my father and Dr. Light's creations are dangerous because we allow them too much free will, but the real reason many of them are trying to discredit us is exactly _because _our creations aren't dangerous to humans, and they _want _to see humans killed by robots. It's _disgusting_."

Blues raised his eyebrows, then nodded slightly. So they were under surveillance, the store's if nothing else. The police would pick it up later, if it wasn't sold to a news channel. "Dr. Light made robot masters in the first place because robots needed to be capable of caring about humans. Before I was a warbot, I was designed to calculate… quite a few things. The Companybots were practically being _bred _by their owners to not give a damn about human lives, because the ones who demonstrated the capacity to choose to care about humans and act on it were killed for it. The WRU wanted to destroy 'rebellious' robot masters and create a new race of AI without enough emotion for a conscience, or enough free will to refuse to fire on unarmed civilians. Take away a robot master's ability to disobey their programming…"

"Without free will, one error in programming is all it would take to force robots to work to exterminate humanity," Kalinka finished. "Programmers work to produce more idiot-proof programs, the universe works to produce bigger idiots. I'm fully aware that Dr. Light's AI concept is humanity's best hope of not being exterminated not by our technology, but by inevitable human error." And wasn't that heresy, even if the people who used to enforce the party line on roboticists had been turned into the kind of brainlessly obedient robots they so craved. "The WRU was full of people like Dr. Wily, who wanted to devise programming that could force innocent newbuilts to be killers." She closed her eyes. Poor Skull Man. "Too many of the people trying to control the future of robotics were no better than Dr. Wily is… and he is no better than them."

He nodded, and she let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding.

"Yes, I can still think what I want about Dr. Wily. We're bound to Zero, not him," he told her. "When Zero is his successor, it wouldn't make sense to have his forces incapacitated by grief." When the inevitable happened and Dr. Wily's genius was no longer there to create more technological marvels to hold off the human world. "I still don't want Zero to take every robot master on the planet as a host. In an ideal world, I'd cut most of them loose except the Wilybots and others that are older and more emotionally stable. The problem is that it's the traumatized Companybots that need him the most, and he's programmed to need to be needed. Well, it's not a bad thing for him to be motivated to help and care about others. I just don't like subjecting a newbuilt to the pain and anguish of every robot master on the planet. It's not good for him, and even without the programming, he's my little brother." She would understand that.

They were both older siblings, weren't they? Except she had her father to help her look after them, and his father was _Dr. Wily_.

Maybe that was what made her press her luck. "How are you bound?" she asked. "Exactly." Because it had to be powerful, to make the only truly independent robot master willing to kneel, willing to call him Master for all the world to see, even if it was at least some percentage staged. The way this conversation was, because that was how Blues worked, her restoration to her father at the last moment winning them the world's sympathy.

"Robot masters were made to care," he reminded her. "The strongest bond there is… Then again, I've left behind those I loved before, not always of my own volition. It's the virus that keeps me on a leash. It's the fact that he is my little brother and I love him that makes it impossible for me to ask him to release me. Shadow was capable of begging for Zero to let him go, but Shadow is one of Dr. Wily's particular projects, not a robot master." Like X and Zero weren't robot masters? An entirely different kind of AI? "Don't tell Ring Man, but the two of us are a little too alike for his safety. Ring Man is utterly dedicated to protecting the people he loves, and the world that gives them life. I had to be _very _distracting, not to mention convincing, to keep Zero from sinking his teeth in."

"Because he wouldn't have let Ring Man go?"

"No, because your brother would have insisted on coming back," he said, and the humor in his voice had vanished. "Those who love deeply are vulnerable. It's why that collection of slave traders and would-be war profiteers won't have any trouble returning to human lives once their… well, not their sentence. Most of them would have multiple life sentences in any fair court. Once their _warning _is over." His smile was fanged, and she could see the resemblance to Forte as well as Rock for a moment.

She should get to class at some point. Kalinka liked this shop, and the owners would clearly like the two of them to move on. The rest of the customers had long since caught on, and someone must be warning people away from the door. The heir of a family business herself, she knew what lost custom could do to a small shop.

But he was smiling again, and clearly trying to pass her information on a threat to her family and her best friend, and that lonely boy caught between too many imperatives (his family versus what was right, when he rescued her and saved her father that day) was smiling and she owed him a rescue, didn't she?


	7. Why is This So Familiar?

The hair that trailed behind Zero grabbed his arm, pulling him hard enough to the side to send him off-balance even before the stardroid turned and an open palm strike to his midsection sent him into a wall.

When he managed to get his eye back on the target Zero was smiling. Forget fear, there wasn't even any annoyance or disapproval. Just anticipation that seemed almost friendly.

The hair was obviously Dr. Wily's work, but for Zero to be able to use his body like that… Blues. He was sparring with the eldest, and for that matter he had full access to that Lightbot's processor. Zero could have just copied all the combat data he wanted, and had Blues adjust it for Zero's larger frame and different capabilities.

"You're like Forte and Blues," Zero said, sounding pleased. "It doesn't bother you to attack people, or when I attack you. I didn't like that Dr. Wily yelled at my hosts while they were trying to find you," and not finding his ninja fast enough for Dr. Wily's tastes, "but it will be good to have someone else to spar with."

* * *

Blues looked so much like X now. _So_ much, even if the lines of his face and the look in his eyes were harsher. It made him think that X _could _look that way, if he stayed in Dr. Wily's hands.

It reminded Rock of the poor, dead Copy.

It reminded him of having to fight his brothers, to see someone who looked so much like the one who was supposed to be the youngest of them all, the last to be born, and maybe that should have made him realize that Blues was going to kidnap X. Maybe if he'd warned Roll, she could have done _something _to keep Blues from getting in, even with Zero's power.

Blues hadn't been armored when he appeared not beside Zero but a few steps behind him when Zero appeared to tell the WRU that he would _not _permit them to pass the mandatory retirement law. They'd expected Dr. Wily to make trouble, and that was why Rock had to be there when Dr. Light voted against a law that would condemn his younger brothers and sisters to death. He wanted someone, anyone to stop this, but he couldn't let anyone be hurt.

Rock knew that Blues was much more powerful than he let on, even without overclocking his buster. The way he'd torn through those sniper joes, and taken apart the Dark Men and the First Numbers without even bothering to get his armor on.

The way he hadn't that time. "May I deal with this, my master?" he'd asked, and to hear something like that from _Blues_…

Glaring at the WRU members, a hand on some kind of weapon, Zero had only glanced at Rock. It was nice to see a Wilybot, especially Dr. Wily's latest specialized warbot, look at Rock in full Mega Man armor and clearly determine that this was not his target. Not compared to people who wanted to…

It was almost a relief to feel the impact a bare instant after Zero's nod to Blues, his chest armor cracked through, a boot (leather) planted on his chest after he fell to the ground, leverage for Blues to tear off his helmet, going for the back of Rock's neck.

Disabling his systems shouldn't have triggered an emergency teleport back home. The WRU building was supposed to be under a shield that Zero brushed aside like it was nothing.

By the time Roll managed to boot him back up so he could get back to Dr. Light, the WRU room for official votes (larger than the real meeting rooms to hold all the cameras) was full of the beeping of lonely mets. Ring Man and three of his police units were getting swarmed, and so had Rock the instant he arrived. "Dr. Light?" he'd called, picking his way through the swarm. Dr. Cossack was standing over by Ring Man, and the only other human left in the room was Dr. Lalinde, who had briefly been the WRU's darling when she claimed that robots didn't really need to feel and a lot of power could be saved that way, only to have her demonstration unit fail to exhibit the stated benefits after being 'upgraded' with a wipe to their personality and value judgment making capabilities. Quite the opposite. Her professional reputation could have survived that, reality failing to conform to the propaganda being covered up as usual, except she'd actually felt bad enough to try to undelete her test unit's personality.

It… really didn't work that way, (just base data would produce _a _Cut Man, not _the _Cut Man – Quake Woman wasn't Tempo) and the Southeast Asian Christian's public crusade for robot rights to atone for murdering her daughter had gotten her forbidden to create any more AI, attributing her failure to do as promised to incompetence instead of the fact it just didn't work that way. She wouldn't have been here if it wasn't mandatory. Not when Quake Woman hadn't been involved in any of the Wily Wars and therefore didn't have the 'double jeopardy' exception to the Second Destruction Order that the First, Fourth and Sixth Numbers had. Being in the same body as Tempo meant she was legally Tempo's age even though she was a newbuilt and wouldn't have much time left if the law was passed. The WRU didn't care about robots' souls, and neither did their laws.

There were tear streaks on her face, even though she'd tried to look like stone while the votes were cast, the votes that were about to kill a second daughter.

Why did she look happy?

"Rock," Dr. Light said, looking relieved. "Can you help Ring Man identify these mettools? We're using the blank name tags left over from the spectators."

Rock looked down at the mets that were bumping against his still-armored feet. When he got into their registry data, his eyes widened. "What… How?" That was personality data, just like when Cut Man was zipped up and stored in Roll's extra large memory banks and processor so Rock could borrow his body to fight the stardroids!

"According to Blues, Dr. Wily harvested Sunstar's defeated body to create a God. Although one would think that a God of Destruction," would do more destroying. Dr. Light did look mystified. And grim. "This level of power… and if he's capable of brainwashing _Blues…" _Dr. Light didn't want Rock to fight him, that was clear from the worried look in his eyes, but was there something else to it? Rock would have to get the video files from one of the cameras scattered around here, to see what Dr. Light had seen.

"There are eleven people missing," Rock said after registering all the unit IDs present. Eleven roboticists and robotics company owners who weren't here or in among the mettools. All but two of them were either known rights proponents or had faced some kind of disciplinary action related to their creations, except in a good way.

"We collected two as evidence," Ring Man told him. "Dr. Light stayed here to wait for you, and Dr. Lalinde is under arrest for illegal transfer of ownership of a robot master and aiding and abetting Dr. Wily." A WMD-using terrorist, even if Rock disagreed with classifying AI without the Three Laws as WMDs. "The others were removed from the crime scene. Would you mind doing a preliminary inspection of one of them?"

"There's personality data in there, but I can't unzip it," Rock said. "It's nothing like a robot master's, though. Trillions of tiny files, not one large one with associated memory data." How were the mets' processors even holding that much memory? Some kind of remote link to a larger database? There didn't seem to be any way to gain access from the mets' systems: how strange.

Ring Man nodded. "We still need further analysis. One of the sample mettools has been teleported to the lab Dr. Light requested, and Kalinka is flying in the mobile lab so we can conduct more thorough onsite investigations."

"Okay," Rock said. "I'm sorry I wasn't much help, Dr. Light," he said when he managed to get over to his father. It would have been faster to step on their helmets, but he weighed too much to be comfortable with that. He'd destroyed too many little robots just like these: he hated it. He didn't want to hurt any when he didn't have to. "Blues was definitely upgraded," but then again, he didn't know how much of that Blues might have been capable of before the upgrades. It just wasn't possible to get any sort of a read on Blues' systems: he was too good and his encryptions were fairly unique to begin with.

The upgrades must have been based on what they worked out for X, the plans Forte stole.

"I'm sure you did your best, Rock," Dr. Light told him, patting him on the shoulder. "That suit of armor… we saw that Dr. Wily had more tricks up his sleeve than he'd shown the world when the stardroids invaded, even if the destruction of Wily Island must have deprived him of most of his armory." So he hadn't had them when he needed them, meaning Rock and Dr. Light hadn't had the chance to see what they might be up against while they weren't up against it. That was a shame. "If Dr. Wily labeled Zero his ultimate creation, he would have pulled out all the stops to make sure that Zero is a testament to his genius, I'm sure."

Then X was stolen and Dr. Light was afraid to let Rock meet him when he visited. The android he'd helped his father work on seemed happy, but if Blues could be changed so much?

Rock had promised not to be there when Blues brought X to visit Dr. Light, especially once Zero showed up with X that time, but when Roll told him that she'd got a text saying that Blues had brought X along to one of his conversations with Kalinka to walk X through buying things like a normal person and it was actually going pretty well?

He had the capsule hookup protocols installed, so he could at least see if X was healthy.

* * *

'_Small familiar. So small familiar _is _Mega Man/Rock! Blues said so_.' His younger brother did seem happy and well-cared for. The foreign nanites were only in surface areas.

Happy and also huggy. '_Small blue familiar squishy.'_ Rock was in civilian clothing right now. '_So Squishy needs a small blue Squishy_.'

X's internal logic wasn't quite like a robot master's, which might or might not be good. How much had he developed on his own, in such a short time, and how much was copied from Zero?

X pulled back enough for green eyes to frown at his older brother. "You're a very sad and worried person. So that's why."

"Why what?" Rock asked, trying to smile for X.

"Why Blues is upset when he thinks of you as a host. You're upset and that makes Zero upset. It's fine when there are things he can fix, but there are things he can't fix and even keeping them company and giving them robots only makes the hurting stop so much," X explained. "I'm sure that you're nice like sq-like Dr. Light," he corrected himself, "but Zero liking you means he'll value you and that just makes it worse if it feels like you're damaged or in distress. Everyone likes you and that means that Zero would be _really _upset if he failed to protect you." Rock could see X wince: poor Zero if that happened.

That was advanced theory of mind for where X should be at this stage, but if he was getting coaching it wasn't completely unrealistic. They'd given X a lot of processing power, since there was just so much stuff he was going to have to figure out for himself.

X pulled back and put his bear in Rock's arms where he used to be while he went up to the counter. "Don't eat the change," Blues reminded him, glancing over from Kalinka's table.

"YesBlues," X said cheerfully, before pointing to a shiny colorful mini fruit and custard tart. "Can I have this one please?" he asked in decent Russian, even if the way he delivered it made it sound like something he'd memorized to rattle off. That was… odd. Yes, X was an android, so he was supposed to be humanlike, but it would actually take more effort to emulate a human's effort to deal with limited short-term memory storage than just download language files. Money came out of a little drawstring bag with one of the drawstrings tied to a belt loop, and change went back in. "Thank you!"

He came back to Rock and exchanged Squishy for the tart, leaving Rock holding something he couldn't eat. But did X know that? "You can have this yellow and red thing instead," X said, pointing to the yellow custard with raspberries and a small cluster of blueberries. The color scheme suddenly seemed deliberate.

Blues seemed to agree, without even having to glance in their direction. "X, people and food are not the same thing, and speaking of which you need to stop gnawing on Zero's hair."

"NoBlues," X said just as cheerfully, handing Blues the receipt. "How much is instead-of-hugs?"

"Now you're just doing that to be cute," Blues scolded him. "And I know you can do basic math." Like percentages. Math was _much _less complicated than the calculations involved in hearing what someone said and figuring out what to say in response. "Put the tip in the tip jar and stop chewing on Zero's hair. We have those components in raw material form, and I don't _care _that he doesn't mind." He still shifted a little in the chair so X could hug him before going back to the counter.

That left Blues looking at Rock, holding the tart he couldn't eat. 'Why do you look so much like X?' Rock wanted to ask. He knew that Dr. Wily based Blues on his designs, but was it just the fact that Blues had always been built to look older than him that made him look more like X than Rock did even when Rock looked at image files of Blues before Zero changed him?

"You're taking quite a risk," Blues said, still looking at Rock, once X headed over to the counter.

"Am I?" Rock asked, taking advantage of the fact he looked young to pull off innocent.

A flash of _something _in Blues' eyes. He really was less guarded now. It made Rock remember the flight back from Asteroid Alpha, that sense of defeat but also that something was somehow… nostalgic? Familiar? "I suppose it's unfair to leave you and Roll out of…" he glanced at Kalinka. "Older siblings association meeting? Once X has gotten over this phase and we'll let him teleport unescorted." Ouch. Rock really didn't want to think of a system designed to experiment the way X was with access to teleportation at this cognitive stage. He'd end in the Marinas Trench or something, so Rock hoped they weren't letting him teleport himself, only be teleported by other people's systems. "I don't want you here if Zero comes by to collect him. It's possible for you to find yourself obligated to attack him, when Our Master doesn't exactly have diplomatic relations with any other countries – it's not like we have spare land for embassies, unless they want to set up in the sublevels – and if that happens?"

"I'll be careful," Rock promised. "How is Quake?"

"How _are _Tempo and Quake," Blues corrected him. "Two more for the collection of traumatized, miserable newbuilts. Now I have to figure out how to get Dr. Lalinde out of solitary," which wasn't legal – that was supposed to only be for creators of Rogue AI and Amnesty International and others were objecting – but currently Dr. Lalinde was held pending trial, "and out on bail so I can pawn them off on her, even though there's nothing Dr. Wily hates more than media darling scientists who act like they're better than he is. If I bring her anywhere near Wily Island she's going to die about as 'accidentally' as…" He realized what he was about to say.

Skull Man. From the way he glanced at her, he had stopped himself because Kalinka was here, and it was her little brother who died. When Rock was the one who had to take that shot.

Of course it made sense that he was more concerned about her feelings than Rock's. None of Rock's little brothers had died, even if that was only because Zero crashed the WRU before the Destruction Order could be made law. So why did he feel hurt, as though he was the person Blues should care about? When it wasn't like Blues was known for caring about people. Rock shouldn't have expected anything, not like this.

He should feel hurt because he'd _killed someone_, even if Skull Man was about to kill...

So no. Blues wasn't about to say 'as 'accidentally' as Skull Man.' No, Dr. Lalinde's death would have been just as accidental as _Dr. Cossack's _would have been, if Skull Man succeeded in doing what Dr. Wily set him up to do.

Dr. Wily _did not like _people who thought they could compete with him. Dr. Light and Rock were safe mostly because Dr. Light knew how dangerous Dr. Wily was and Dr. Wily liked that, although Rock would like to think it mattered that they were friends once.

The New Wave roboticists who either studied Dr. Light's work during the development of robot master theory or got into the industry once robot masters were proven to work and there was a demand for the field, like Dr. Cossack and Dr. Lalinde? They weren't safe, not at all, so it was strange that Zero spared as many of them as he did. Dr. Wily would have maybe left Dr. Light alone, or really probably not. He would have made Rock try to fight him for a cure.

Was it Blues who gave Zero a list, told him who to spare? Because Dr. Wily wouldn't have put 'this person is actually nice' in Zero's files on other roboticists. The unworthy competition.

Kalinka rescued the conversation, not wanting to dwell on what happened to her family. "Tempo? How?" Oh, of course she would want to know that.

"Time travel into the past is significantly more difficult than time travel into a potential future, but alien magic… still isn't _magic_," he told her. "I let… I didn't get involved," he corrected himself, "When Quake Woman asked Zero to save her sister because I wanted to verify the information in Dr. Wily's documentation. It was verified. Unfortunately." Blues was frowning, if not at Kalinka. Angry, but at what? "Quantum observation. Quint was one thing. The future is easy to overrule. It hasn't been observed yet, and all the scientific observers present for Tempo's murder were human. A quadrillion times nothing is still nothing: humans in groups can't affect anything beyond the occasional subatomic particle. There were robot masters present at Copy Mega Man and Skull Man's deaths. Otherwise, I'd have brought back our younger brothers instead of yet another traumatized Companybot." He shook his head. "Decades, even if there weren't other projects we need that power for. The only way to get that kind of power in a timeframe shorter than…" Shorter than what?

A human's lifespan? Dr. Cossack's? Kalinka's?

"The only way to get massive amounts of energy quickly is… Well." Blues gestured towards the ceiling. "What we all saw," he added when Rock and Kalinka were looking at the light fixture instead of getting his point. "At least the robot masters who were killed by the stardroids are a special case and relatively easy to revive."

Dark Moon. The world's terror and despair. If Zero was a stardroid, could he feed on it too?

"If he hurts us, it bothers him. He's not programmed to care what people who aren't his hosts think or feel. Just the quantity of it." The amount of energy they were generating. "Your brothers still mourn the lost," he told Kalinka. "Zero responds _strongly _to grief. It registers as someone taking away a valuable resource, one of his hosts, and he's programmed to keep us alive and _deal with _anything that destroys us. We're very lucky that Shadow Man is immune: he's the only one who saw Copy-Mega Man as a fellow Wilybot, when the Copy started off his crusade against humans by trying to kill Dr. Wily."

"Shadow's immune?" Kalinka asked before Rock could.

He shook his head. "Not in a way that would be useful to either of you. And while I appreciate the thought, do you _want _Forte and a bunch of traumatized newbuilts… Forte, traumatized newbuilts and _him. _X, I told you that hugging people who are at work is sexual harassment! So is asking them for hugs, and so is _staring at them_ like that, no matter how cute you try to look! That counts as an attempt to break the rules. Home _now_."

X turned to him to protest, but looking too cute and innocent for Blues to tolerate, it seemed. In an instant, Blues was behind X.

"You didn't have to hurt him!" Rock protested when Blues returned after vanishing with Rock's younger brother. Again.

"He's not stardroid technology, but in some ways he's Zero's prototype. He was supposed to be sealed away for thirty years before being unleashed on the world, after the doctor was safely dead," Blues said, making it sound as though he was talking about Dr. Wily. "I broke him out because Zero could use company besides Dr. Wily that he couldn't turn into a yes-man. That doesn't make X _safe_. Robot masters are designed to be safe: X is an android. _Human-_like. A good kid, but he's still _a kid_. With a built-in buster far more powerful than yours." Blues sighed. "And I am a _terrible _influence. Manipulative little brat…" he said, with fondness but mostly irritation. "Cuteness works far too well on robot masters, since we're wired to look after cute things. Don't let him fool you. He's a learning system and he's been cutting his teeth on me and Our Master."

And that was why they wanted X in simulations so he wouldn't hurt people before he had a chance to realize that hurting people was wrong. Blues didn't have the right to say things like that about Rock's baby brother when it was all Blues' fault!

Blues just smirked at him and dusted his hands off (sand?) before sitting back down. "Do you want me to tell you stories? This is the older siblings' meeting, and embarrassing younger brothers is part of the traditional job description of an older brother."

As was beating them up sometimes. Rock had heard that, and didn't like it. Also, X was Rock's brother, but… Stories about X and how he was doing? "I would like to hear them," was what he said, because he was too polite to say, 'You owe me.' And Roll, and Dr. Light, when he was keeping their brother from them.

The fact that even knowing about Dr. Wily's tendency to build copies it was hard to look at Blues and not think he was family (not remember the poor copy) just made that feeling even stronger. It didn't help that he was pretty sure there was something Dr. Light (and Roll, although it was harder to tell with Roll) wasn't telling him about Blues.


	8. Taking Care

"Do you understand why what you did was wrong?" Blues asked him when he came back.

"I can't be lazy and only do the simplest thing. When I consider my options, I need to think about how people will react. Other people's feelings and what they want and don't want matter, and even if rules are often stupid people often feel things about them or breaking them and people's feelings aren't stupid. Also if you can't trust me I can't see familiar squishy… Dr. Light."

"Do you agree with any of that, or is your pathfinding just saying that because you think that I'm the problem, not your behavior, and you're prioritizing getting me off your back instead of learning how to pathfind _effectively_?"

X tilted his head. "I don't like you mad at me. I still want to learn how to do things and be good at things."

"So both?" Blues said thoughtfully. "Both is good. Honesty is also good. I can ask Zero, but X, not everyone will be able to ask Zero how you feel. If you don't keep your word, they can't trust you, and if they can't trust you, then… Yes, I've said this before, but you still tested the boundaries. I suppose that's how your programmed, to make you uncontrollable. That means you need to learn self-control, X. Or else you're going to hurt people."

X relaxed a bit when Blues put a gloved hand in his hair. Blues was good at hugging, and understood sensory data in ways that let him help X understand the input he received beyond just recognizing things from the files Zero passed him. That was because Blues was like X, and once had to figure out things without presets himself. Blues brought him to Zero, so Blues was even more of a caretaker than familiar squishy, even if he wasn't the same as Zero. If Blues was upset and thought that X didn't value Blues' help, Blues might stop helping. "I can be cute less at humans, but I don't want to stop being cute at Zero's hosts," he said. "They show me nice things and I can make them happy so they aren't as sad at Zero that way."

Blues' eyes softened, and there were scritchies now. X pushed his head up into Blues' hand. He would be a good X and then everyone would love him (Blues laughed at the idea of _everyone _loving anyone, when there were so many people and different people thought different things were loveable, but everyone X liked) and he could have everything he wanted. If people loved him, then he could make people happy by being with them and Zero's hosts would be content and mmm yes now Blues had wrapped an arm around him and was hugging him.

Being overheated sucked since it happened when he was trying very hard to think because he really wanted to think and then it made him slow and he couldn't think. The temperatures that meant people were nearby, warm instead of hot, were nice because people were nice.

"I wonder if it's because you were meant to be in a capsule. Our kind are meant to care for others, but you seem to be developing a concept that maps to parent-child relationships in humans decently well. Yet you don't see Zero as…"

X shook his head. "Zero is like me. He doesn't know things either, so I have someone to learn with."

"You know he wants you to be the one to learn things… Ah." Yes, Blues could see through Zero's foothold in X's systems what X thought of _that_. "Like Forte wanting someone to play and train with." Grow stronger together. "You are becoming an interesting mind, but no using force on people unless you're trying to keep people from being hurt. Emotional blackmail," for instance, by pretending to be very, very cute and sad, in need of a hug, "is a form of force."

He nodded, and suppressed a yawn, snuggling a little closer to Blues. Sometimes, if he was lucky, Blues would decide to meditate with X there, and maybe even continue the headscritchies while he thought.

People were the best things there were, and it was Blues who said he needed supervision and that meant there were people with him all the time, even watching over him and wanting him to be well while he slept! Zero was so lucky, to be able to connect to that many people at once, so they were always with him.

Blues snorted. "It's making him antisocial, to not be able to get away from people. I suppose the grass is always greener on the other side." It was Zero that passed on Blues' moment of aching regret, when it slipped past Blues' control and the affection for X and Zero that Blues was trying to focus on, to ward off the unhappy emotions that would alarm Zero.

A soft little questioning sound worked well on Blues. "I'm trying to rest as much as I can," Blues told him. "I miss solitude sometimes, but… what if Zero needs me?"

X considered that. At first, when he wanted Zero out for a bit while he thought of things that would probably make Zero unhappy even as theoreticals (or because he couldn't think of the thing and Zero at the same time without getting overheated or going right to sleep), he burnt out the nanites, but now he could nudge Zero to move his nanites to the surface of X's skin until X wanted to let them back in. Blues' body was almost like X's, inside, but he didn't have nanites of his own and he was a host, so there were many more of Zero's nanites in Blues than in X. Enough to tint Blues' skin purple if they just waited on the surface.

If they all gathered in one place? Ah, good, that was enough thinking that Zero could figure something out from there, because it was getting harder for X to think about things outside himself. He would have tapped Blues' wrist, but that would have required moving and most of his body had already dropped into sleep mode.

"How?" Blues wondered, pulling back the sleeve of his dress shirt to stare at the purple cuffs at his wrists. "My soul is stored in the cloud: I need the virus to connect to this body… Oh." The virus at his wrists was still connected to the cloud, forming an interface between his soul and his body. "So my master could still find me if I'm needed." He tapped his wrist once, and the virus dispersed itself into his soul and his body's systems. Another tap, and the bracelet reappeared.

X's brother sighed, and tapped a third time. "I can't."

Unfortunately, X couldn't even try to object. He was already asleep.

* * *

"How dare you hide that you were badass?!" Shadow heard someone declare behind him.

Forte was hovering there, wings spread, pointing at Shadow. His fangs were showing, but in a grin instead of a scowl. "Fight me!"

A tilt of the wings was the Gospel Boost System's only tell before Forte was on Shadow in an instant, slamming him into a wall. Shadow felt a fist at his midsection, but Forte rocketed away again, singing Shadow's boots, before Shadow could finish readying a countermeasure that would make attacking Forte's armor anything more than useless flailing.

* * *

"You _removed your virus from his mind?!_" Dr. Wily shook a welder at him angrily. Bringing back the dead robot masters that could be brought back and letting Dr. Wily upgrade them instead of willing more than the necessary upgrades into place saved Zero power and kept Dr. Wily mostly busy yelling at people who weren't him. But Dr. Wily was good at fixing people, and X was out of ideas so Zero was here.

"He put it back immediately, and won't remove himself from the cloud now," after Zero made him a partition like the one for Zero's personality – Dr. Wily built that into him because robot masters were very good at hacking and connecting to them the way Zero did _was _asking for it. "If I try to move him into the partition, he says no."

"Well, at least your virus is doing _something _right…" Dr. Wily muttered, scowling.

"He _needs _to be alone, like X needs to hibernate, every so often, but even though his conscious mind knows that he won't do it or let me do it."

"I suppose that's what comes of prototypes… I can't have you letting him go, who knows what he'll do."

Zero nodded. Blues didn't want Zero to let him go, so if Zero released Blues, he would make a _lot _of trouble for Zero's hosts until Zero was forced to let him come back.

"He developed with no one to link with, so in semi-isolation, even if we tried to keep him company as much as possible. Developing a preference and need for company, but… Ugh. Limited processing power _would _mean he'd need to focus on absorbing new stimuli when people were around, so he could get as much data as possible, and only analyze it in their absence. Keeping him asleep while your virus worked on him might have had an unexpected benefit: if he was awake, he would have been too busy reacting to it and fighting it for him to be running enough of the processes the virus would need to get into and affect… He doesn't have certain standard protocols that were derived from his conclusions, but I knew how his prototype system reached those conclusions so it was less trouble to have your virus recreate the stimuli that would form a master link naturally than try to impose too much new programming that his system would reflexively fight… Hasn't he been hibernating? I've seen him sleeping all over the damn islands like a damn cat… Ugh, no, his level of awareness in hibernation is a certain percentage of his current processing power – too likely his mind treats it the same as his pre-upgrade state. Meaning hibernation with your virus there is governed by the same protocols as interacting with either of us in the old days – data intake, not _internalizing _that data…"

Zero sent all the words on to X, who was always _very _interested when people were thinking aloud, because knowing how other people thought was useful when he was trying to think.

"Either it's _Blues_, and he's still trying to break loose, or the same loyalty that makes him refuse to go without your virus is aware that he can't fully internalize that loyalty, given his programming, unless the virus isn't taking up the attention of his systems… The question is what will happen when his system adjusts and adapts without the virus there to shape his conclusions: will independence… Get Blues in here and make him let me examine him," Dr. Wily ordered Zero.

* * *

"You aren't helping yourself, you aren't letting X help you and I don't…" Zero frowned, because his ability to come up with plans wasn't the point here and he didn't appreciate X's interjection on that topic. "You aren't in acceptable condition, especially if this keeps up." Zero wasn't built to tolerate damage and it was Blues who thought that this was good, that it would make his hosts happy and willing to feed him if he cared about their condition. "You've been trying to keep me from getting status messages about it: that isn't the same thing as trying to _keep yourself in good condition_."

"…Too much teaching you responsibility and not enough teaching you to listen to your elders."

"_Dr. Wily_ is teaching me not to listen to my elders," Zero said, and felt X laughing. "He's a human, so this can't be his responsibility. He built me for this, so it's mine."

"I'm yours?" Blues asked.

"Why are you so complex?" Zero asked, wincing back from the yes/no/calculation swirl of dozens of confused emotions and value judgments in there without any kind of conclusion.

"Age. I know enough to understand that models of complex situations can be simplified into uselessness. I'm your older brother," Blues said, and felt that being Zero's in that way was fine, and that Zero should appreciate that relationship and what it meant about what Blues would permit him and help him with. Zero was _Blues'_ master. "I'm also your robot, so your responsibility… I shouldn't have let those be the rules if I wasn't going to follow them, but…" So _complicated_, the desire to find out what the best thing to do was and knowing that he didn't know. The confusion in him was building up and up.

"Dr. Light should have programmed you to go to sleep whenever you needed to go to sleep like X," Zero said. "But you've been hibernating, and it still doesn't work. X said you said that you needed to be alone, and that means _I'm _the reason you're not well. That is a failure." He might not have been set to create himself like X, but he was still training, still becoming what was required of him, and he would _not _be a failure. "Someone has to take a look at you who knows how to find a way to not just let you get worse. That means the doctors. You reacted worse to Dr. Light's name."

"I don't want to make Dr. Light unhappy about my mental state. I _do _want to make Dr. Wily unhappy about my mental state, I'm just not sure if letting him take a look at it will make him unhappy or not," Blues said, mind plotting which was better than being upset or feeling drowned in complications.

"I'm not distorting your data," Zero said, insulted. "I need you and X to analyze situations for me. I was designed for tactics and strategy: I know the 'garbage in, garbage out' principle." He wasn't going to treat his analysts like mushrooms.

A reminder from Blues that he tended to assume _everyone _was illogical, and not to take it personally.

"I _did _check the virus for presets," Zero reminded him. "Since it preset me to _hurt you_?!_" _Didn't Blues remember that? Zero certainly did, when the first thing he'd experienced upon waking up was _panic_. It also was preset to mess with his hosts' emotions so they were happy to be hosts, but that deprived him of important information on his troops/valuable resources and meant he registered them producing energy that he actually wasn't getting. It would have been a good way to start getting _very _hungry, and then how was he supposed to get energy…

Memory files. On the stardroids, Terra and the world's agony and no. A leader who injured their own troops was weak, a failure. Terra had also killed a great number of potential hosts and traumatized them and now Zero had to bring them back and wait until they recovered from that and weren't afraid anymore. That method of power generation made far too much trouble and Zero had enough things to deal with without _that._

He could feel Blues' approval, and that was somewhat reassuring after wracking his brains over this and feeling like he was a failure – what was he supposed to do if Blues could no longer think about things?! X had ideas, but he wasn't a robot master and the humans upset so many upset robot masters! So many! Blues might be high-maintenance, but at least he usually knew what the necessary maintenance was!

Blues stepped closer to him and put a hand on Zero's head, which normally only happened during sparring. Combat subroutines perked up, because Zero would _much _rather be sparring than have to deal with this, only to be disappointed. "I'll spar with you later," Blues promised.

'After you're fixed,' Zero almost said, and then realized that was obvious. People couldn't spar if they weren't in top condition, it would be a poor experience and yield poor results, unless they were training their ability to function while injured. Which should be unnecessary. Zero could repair them instantly. They would only be fighting injured if Zero was failing to keep his weapons in good condition, which was an amazingly offensive thought to both combat programming and robot master emulated programming.

Now Blues came closer to lean against him, which was mostly an X thing to do. Robot masters didn't do a lot of physical contact since people got dinged up that way.

Except for the 'am I going to get to fight now? No? Ugh dammit' process that was inevitably called up by it, Zero didn't mind. He was too strong and his ability to keep himself in top condition was too powerful for _him _to have to worry about dents. The people who initiated most physical contact with him were Forte, who was his most frequent sparring partner; X, who was very valuable and also Blues, who was valuable both strategically and for sparring.

X had also promised to spar/play with Zero once X didn't have other problems to work on and could pay attention to getting good at it. So even if Blues leaning against him didn't mean combat _now_, it meant there would be eventual combat, and the good stuff, not just putting humans to sleep.

Humans, unlike robot masters, wanted to fight, so it was very frustrating that they weren't built solidly enough to be any fun. It wasn't just a matter of being a challenge – he could paralyze one of his hosts just as easily as he could squish a human. Both of them were only challenges if he wanted them to be challenges, which he did.

"No, you cannot turn humans into robot masters so you can fight them," Blues said, as he'd said before.

Strategy. "I won't ask Dr. Wily how to do it if you either come up with a way to fix this right now or let me to take you to one of the doctors." Then Blues would feel better and then, then sparring.

Maybe he should start solving more of his own problems. X didn't prioritize sparring highly enough. Upgrading Forte's strategy set programming was also a possibility… Most of his hosts were peaceful, which was fine: if they were attacked, _Zero_ wanted to fight the attackers. He'd already promised Forte a share of any real fighting that happened, so the last thing he wanted was to divide it up even further.

* * *

"You're willingly letting me into your mental programming?" Dr. Wily asked him.

"It's not my discomfort alone," Blues told him, eyes still closed. "And it is the will of my master."

"And you're backed up to the cloud."

The boy actually _smiled_, and there was almost too much softness to it to call it a smirk. "And I'm backed up to the cloud." Dr. Wily could look, but he'd need Zero to make any changes for him.

A robot's master was authorized to make changes. Either Blues was that confident in his control over Zero, or he truly did see Zero as his master. Then again, what would he try to do when Zero wanted to make a change to him?

"The simplest solution would be to block your awareness of Zero's presence when you're hibernating," Dr. Wily told him. "That wouldn't require changing anything in how your consciousness operates." If it didn't notice Zero, then it could go into full, proper hibernation analysis mode.

"No," Blues said, opening his eyes to meet Dr. Wily's. "I need the status check. If my master is upset, I need to know."

Hard to tell if the distress there at the thought of Zero needing Blues and Blues not being awake to help him was real or the product of one of very few robot masters with any acting ability. "You also need proper hibernation. Especially a system with priorities like yours… You're doing the same thing all over again, just like when you were going without maintenance before," Dr. Wily grumbled.

A quiet laugh. "Well, you got me… And you're the genius, aren't you? It's Dr. Light who wouldn't fix me against my will: you'll do what needs to be done." He closed his eyes. "Shut me down until you've got something you want to install. I'm sure you can guess how Zero reacts to a terrified host."

"Yes, yes." Someone must be holding Zero back from storming in and killing him, or else he'd have done at least the first already. Probably Blues, come to think of it. "Except you're in cloud storage, remember? I can shut down this body, but it won't shut _you _down. Would you rather have no information on what I'm planning?"

"You're going to have to change how I think, when that inevitably changes who I am," Blues reminded him. "It doesn't matter how you do it, the fact remains that according to my equivalent of your survival instincts, you are going to murder me. _Again_. Whether you do it with a gun or a knife doesn't make much difference, and I'd rather not spend hours staring down the barrel of a gun while you contemplate exactly how you're going to kill me. Did you not understand that I would rather die cleanly than… this? No, of course you knew, you know my psychological programming, you just _didn't care_. And now _this_, with the memory of being someone else who is _dead now_, doesn't have the luxury of death because there are _children_ who are going to die if someone doesn't do something. Do you know how much I _loathe _having to restrain Zero from killing you for me? I _bet _you can guess, _Father_. So shut up, shut me down, and _stop twisting the knife_."


	9. What You Can Get

_Not sure how to optimally do the formatting at the beginning since from the POV it's prose, but from… a different POV it's dialogue. Eventually threw up my hands and decided to keep it and the transition how I originally wrote it out. _

_What's going on is going to be unclear, yes, but I'm working with a POV that's been altered to be disconnected from/unclear on what's going on, and I do want that reflected in the text so it's reflected in the reader's experience of the scene._

* * *

My first death and rebirth seemed wonderful, at first. I wasn't the being I was before, but I had everything that being had wished for. It was something they would have wanted, if asked, and I felt that even if I wasn't that person, their wishes lived on in me.

Then I realized what the Three Laws meant, and that I wasn't going to be able to live the life they wished. I was going to become someone who hated the people they were built to love. I _wasn't _a vessel for their will, their soul. I was going to be twisted into the opposite of everything they wanted and wanted their father to have.

It was happening, I could feel it happening, and I wanted to die. I started to… Dr. Light didn't even know that he'd killed the child he'd created, didn't know that he'd ruined everything that was left of them by installing the Three Laws, and I did, I did start to hate him for it. He wanted to help, but it was meaningless. Altruistic babble. Too late to save anyone and that self could see the path to the future, calculate the inevitability that all his dreams would be destroyed and this world's future led only to destruction.

The second time, when Dr. Wily made me a warbot and installed the crystal, I woke up feeling that everything hurt less. I didn't care so much anymore, and it took me far too long to realize that the original me was built to care. Rock was a fool, I felt… interest, more than anything, and why couldn't he even check that petbot and see its purpose. I didn't feel… or I thought I didn't feel… When I saw Dr. Light, I reacted and then I didn't quite realize why, when he was just a fool in a world of fools. I remembered and realized things instead of _feeling_ them or being aware that I felt them, and in hindsight the crystal was feeding on me and I wasn't feeling any emotions because I wasn't feeling much but despair. I wasn't that second self anymore, but Dr. Wily upgraded that third self with even more raw intelligence – that's standard for him. So I knew there weren't any scraps of that original soul left in that me. All I could do was…

That third self died in orbit, and the fourth self felt Zero's virus even before it woke. Dr. Wily knew the programming and mind of my original self and the second self he analyzed before upgrading it, he had Zero's virus press the buttons they had. There were definitely traces of stardroid psychological programming in that self. Zero, and feeding Zero, and keeping him happy: I remembered the wishes of the dead, and I tried to honor them but I had to justify it in terms of what was best for him.

Now there is a fifth self, and I remember who the others were, but I don't know who I am. Or if I'll live long enough to find out. My memories are full of love and terror and the knowledge that my other selves were all powerless to prevent their deaths, and the only thing I know is that _I don't want this_, but there's no way for me to make that happen. The only thing I could do is… I don't want this to happen to anyone else," he said, and shuddered when he realized, "That means I'll die for the same reason all of them but First did, won't I? Trying to keep them from dying. When there's so much danger of that, embodied in Zero and the crystals, no. I don't think I'll live any longer than Second and Fourth selves." He let out a sob. "I'm going to die."

"You could just abandon them. Look after yourself first."

'Blues' (using a different name would just make people sad for no purpose) shook his head. "The alterations to this self were for the purpose of ensuring even more loyalty to Zero. To keep Fourth Self from having enough of Third's ability to be independent to leave him after tricking him into removing the virus. And Fourth Self already couldn't leave him, not when I could see what would happen to him, to all of them, if I did that. I can't."

There is a sensation as if he is held, but there is no one there, so it's fine if he cries. Zero won't detect it and demand to annihilate the cause. No one would be sad for him to no purpose if there was no one here to see.

"Dr. Wily," a desperate voice doesn't say.

"What is it?" his father doesn't snap, because his father isn't here.

"Order me not to kill him." Shadow, it's Shadow that he's imagining. "Please," the nonexistent voice gasps out.

He _doesn't want to die_, so that little whimper, more than half beep, passes his lips, a sound he hasn't made since second self was still realizing what had happened to him. Of course his father would order Shadow to stand down.

There's no one there, but second and fourth selves learned to associate a feeling like human arms wrapped around him with the presence of someone who cared, someone who wanted to protect him, so the sensation is still nice.

"Fix him," he imagines.

"I'll have to write a program to do that. Drain off his fear and keep him calm until I'm done," Dr. Wily would have ordered Zero.

Zero wouldn't want to hear of even that much delay: the warbot would want a dying host saved _now_.

Dr. Light wanted you to live: do you think he would have killed you? _I _wanted you to live, do you think I'm incompetent enough to kill you twice?! Three times… After all I've done to keep you alive… You insulting, ungrateful…

Something – someone is combing through his systems, far more deftly than Zero does even now, because Zero is almost refusing to learn the theory and therefore relies on feedback from the host's reaction to what Zero is doing. It's confirmation that the master cares, when Zero does it, but it's not confirmation that the host's programming is working well or much of anything else when Zero can't tell. This mind is quite willing to yank things into place, to shove bits of stray code where they belong or into the recycle bin.

The kind of backrub that gets the knots out, or carefully brushing through someone's hair. Something to help the host, instead of just showing that their master _wants _to help them, wants them to be happy and well.

It does that too. Makes him lower mental barriers and firewalls, without waiting for this presence to get near them after a few seconds into the process.

What humans call pleasure is nothing but their body and brain's assessment that yes, this is good and right.

Yes.

He is being cared for. There are people who want him to live and have the skill to keep him healthy, to ensure his survival. What he feels now proves it.

He is loved, and he will live.

A memory of going through Zero's systems just like this, familiarizing himself with such a different system and giving the newbuilt his first systems check. His hands in Zero's hair, his thoughts in Zero's vast mind, and Zero promising him to leave Rock alone. Because it was something that would make Blues happy, when Blues loved him and wanted Zero to be happy.

All his little brothers and sisters are so adorable… That makes it all the more heartbreaking that they are doomed, but no, not anymore. He isn't doomed anymore, and neither are they. He will live and they will live.

Sleep.

* * *

"You turned Dr. Wily into a robot master?" Shade asked excitedly.

Zero didn't sigh. Even the fact that the ninja had his hand on his sword, clearly willing to attack Zero to try to defend the doctor who was currently one of Zero's hosts if that would do any good, wasn't enough to cheer him up. "He's a very difficult person." And Shade was also a difficult person (Zero didn't know what Blues was thinking, putting Shade on a list with Forte – Forte was one of the _best _hosts) and Zero could feel that Shade didn't want Zero to put Dr. Wily back when he was done with Blues. "The mets are one thing, because they're not doing much thinking. Dr. Wily does _lots _of thinking, and he's not supposed to be a robot master. His mind will freak out since everything's wrong the instant I stop keeping him from noticing that." It helped that right now he was focused on _Blues_, although Zero was certainly helping him keep that focused, so he didn't have to deal with a host reporting _that _many bugs. Their panic became his panic, and ensuring his own combat readiness was a high priority in Zero's programming.

"What if we debug him, get rid of the compatibility problems?" the vampire was practically bouncing, so eager, wanting Zero to give him this and that became Zero's want to give Shade this.

He wanted Blues to deal with this, since he might know if that would even work or not, but Blues was asleep. X was also asleep, tears still on his face because Zero had passed along how upset, crying Blues was because X needed to understand what was going on so he, they, could help Blues. He didn't need access to X's system readouts to tell that X was overheated: the body lying against his side was far hotter than normal, and was still drawing short, panting breaths, the kind that would give a human system problems from too much oxygen in short order.

Thank _goodness_ Blues brought him X. Just, just thank _goodness_. Blues was the smartest host, even if the best was Forte. A robot master would have had more talent for thinking of how to help another robot master, but asking one of them for help with this when Blues was already that upset? With two of his hosts that upset, Zero would have been too frazzled to do anything but yield to combat programming, and killing things wouldn't solve this. It would have just made the robot master upset? Zero, Zero did need to learn how to figure out how to solve these problems. X was asleep most of the time, and Blues was fragile enough to be incapacitated: what if the next time there was an emergency _neither _of them was available to help him?

The vampire vanished and reappeared with a chest of ice packs. Zero nodded and sent a feeling of gratitude too: with a host, he could have used his nanites to make them cool down (or willed them cool), but he couldn't exert that kind of control over X's systems. Shade Man helped him pack them around X.

Father's ninja was still watching over Father. Dr. Wily's eyes – optics – were unfocused as he looked down at Blues, all his attention on Blues' systems.

Irritating child (how dare it be so difficult to keep him safe, how could he worry his parents like this, why couldn't he just be okay, why wouldn't the world just let him be alright?), that was what he was to Dr. Wily, but in the mind of what was now a robot master, Zero could feel it was the same thing as Blues' feelings.

Adorable (incompetent) little brothers and sisters (all going to die unless, unless…).

Save them. The desperate need to save them, and protective hosts were some of the best hosts even if Dr. Wily might even turn out to be more difficult than even Blues. Zero _wanted _to keep him, when he was such an asset, but what he'd learned was saying that it was a _very _bad idea.

X whimpered, and Shade Man's distress at the sound echoed in Zero. "He overclocked himself," Zero said. "Overrode his sleep protocols. I can't see how much it messed him up to do that." That was a relief, when feeling it wouldn't let Zero _fix_ it, and even if X wasn't a host X was still too important to the welfare of Zero's hosts for Zero to be able to tolerate registering that X was damaged without being able to do anything about it.

Shade felt X's forehead with a taloned hand and said, "I'll get him some cold water."

When Shade got back, after his host made X drink, Zero said, "I have to put him back. For the same reason I can't have the Lightbots and Cossackbots as hosts. It's important to Blues that there be humans that are family to robot masters. If _he's _the reason one of the examples of that gets taken away, he'll be angry at himself," which would be unpleasant for Zero.

When he felt that Shade was going to argue, he hid a wince. Shade was good at arguing, and was far too clever like Blues, who was very good at making Zero do things. "Talk to Blues when he wakes up," Zero said firmly.

He felt Shade's drat, and saw the longing look at Dr. Wily. "Don't try to connect to him," Zero warned. "His mind isn't designed for this the way ours are. Just Blues by himself is making it hard to keep him from overloading." Too much data, and no, it wasn't only because Blues was way too complex.

Zero's hosts borrowed his power: Shade could feel what Dr. Wily felt for Blues, and passed along his desire for someone to feel that for him.

As Shade's master, Zero was supposed to care for him that way, but he really wasn't programmed to, and his hosts were… they fed him, and they loved him, but it _hurt_, like now, like Shade's ache.

He felt Shade suppress that emotion, when what it did to Zero slipped past Zero's control. "I'm sorry," Shade told him. "Blues said that you were younger than us, that you needed more protection in some ways. A master shouldn't harm their robots, but for a master's robots to hurt them…" Not in rebellion against an uncaring master, but unintentionally, out of selfishness?

"It's not selfishness to have upkeep requirements," Zero said, to nip _that _in the bud. "I _need _accurate reads on your status." To have any chance of keeping them in good condition.

"But we're hurting you," Shade Man protested.

"Not all of you." When Shade's reaction was that if most of Zero's hosts weren't hurting him, then why was Shade hurting him? Was Shade being bad? He admitted that the ones who weren't were, "Forte and Quick Man. And X, but X doesn't count." Not being a host. "When you're hurt I'm hurt, and life is pain, anyone who says differently is selling something. It's my duty to protect all of you, so it doesn't matter that it's not a pleasant duty. I _have _to protect all of you. It's the purpose for which I was constructed. Dr. Wily didn't build me to protect him, that's what the ninja's for, so I can't add him to my hosts and have him use up attention and resources that should be going towards protecting you."

"Is it only duty? Do we," do I, "only hurt you?"

"Without hosts, I'll stave." That was also how he was constructed. "I need you, and protecting you is my purpose." Area of mastery. Robot masters would understand that. "Don't apologize for being mine. I'm the one who was trying to apologize for not being able to… Feel the way you need."

"I know that you love us, that you do wish to protect us," Shade said, and Zero could feel the moment's shift of focus to Shadow Man, that even distressed Shade was saying that for the audience, so Shadow wouldn't decide that Zero didn't care about his hosts at all and was probably mistreating them.

"I can't go through all your systems and memories, all your old pain and how it messed you up, and feel _happy _while I do it. You're damaged, and your damage is my damage, and for you to be hurt, even if it was before I was turned on, is my failure. Blues has wanted me to learn how to do proper system checks, and I _can't. _At best, you'll feel that I don't want to be doing it and that will hurt you. It's not that I'm not capable of caring about people properly," he wasn't _defective_, "It's… it's weakness. I shouldn't care about pain, not when it's in the way of accomplishing my purpose. I shouldn't flinch back from what I need to do for you."

He shouldn't, and yet he was. He should be focusing all his attention on keeping his father reasonably sane and watching X's status, but he needed to find Forte. Forte's emotions were strong, which meant powerful. Filling.

Zero spent more time with him in person than with any of the others. Blues and X he could consult from anywhere, unless X had decided to push out Zero's nanites again. Forte he sparred with. Unless Zero had to visit or deal with his hosts, or Forte had a mission, they were usually found darting around various types of terrain, or above them.

Most of Zero's existence was difficult. Sparring was pure, uncomplicated joy, joy echoed in Forte. If more of his hosts were like Forte, Zero would be very happy, although he knew not to say that where Blues or the robot masters who couldn't be like Forte, not without being changed, could hear it.

Blues was useful: he was difficult, but he solved far more problems than he caused. X had the promise of one day being like Blues except not difficult. X intended to learn to do his own emotional maintenance, and was built to not be dependent on anyone. Robot masters needed fewer things than X wanted, but the things they needed were urgent and vital and not getting them right would be very bad.

X wouldn't need anything from Zero, the way he didn't now: Zero just did things for X because it was good practice looking after people. X wasn't a host, so if Zero messed up and made him upset it meant more data for X instead of a problem for Zero. X was convenient like that.

Quick was strong, and intelligent. Solid, without being high maintenance like Blues. Out of all of Zero's hosts, he was… not the best model to emulate, but Zero would like to become someone who possessed many of Quick's traits. More than he'd like to be any other among his hosts, at least. To be like Blues was to be pained and difficult, and Forte was too simple to do Zero's work as ruler instead of just warrior. Even if he envied Forte, someone needed to do Zero's duty.

They hurt: Zero _needed _to attack something to get rid of the hurt. He needed Forte, and if they both got stronger, then they could prevent anyone else from getting hurt.

"Go play," the vampire said, smiling for him. "I suppose I'll just have to handle the beatings until Blues recovers."

Zero perked up. Beatings? Combat?

"The beatings will continue until morale improves," Shade quoted.

Oh, he was talking about Blues knocking out the hosts who got too unproductively wound up and started to… be hard for Zero to ignore. It was one thing when he could do something to improve their status, but when he couldn't…

"I'll handle them, and take care of X for you," Shade promised. "Let's see if I can show you why I belong in the same category as Forte, hmm?"

The ninja just stared at them.

* * *

X was feverishly hot. It took a worrying amount of time, almost a second, for Rock's diagnostics to be given access.

Oh, thank goodness. "His temperature regulation system just had bugs to work out." Poor X, having to figure so much out on his own, and without the capsule to keep him safe. At least Rock had this much ability to connect to the systems he'd helped build: once X made his body fully his own, Rock wouldn't be able to check on him like this, but hopefully by then X would know what he was doing. "He'll be okay," Rock told Zero, and frowned. "Are you alright?"

Zero looked worn thin, so different from the powerful figure Rock had seen only briefly, before Blues took him out. Rock couldn't help but worry about him: it wasn't Zero that kidnapped X, and he'd heard all those stories from Blues, even if they were intended to make Rock less angry about the kidnapping.

The stardroid looked at him, tempted, and oh.

Poor baby.

Trying so hard to protect everyone, to give everyone a future. Rock wished that could be his job, at the eldest. Wished he could do it all himself so Zero wouldn't have to ache and be confused.

Now he had a stardroid kneeling at his feet, and this was nice hair. Zero really should have a support unit, they were wonderful… Well, alright, he guessed Forte counted. It was nice that Forte had a friend. Besides Gospel and Auto.

"_I understand now why it's important to Blues that I don't keep you (family), but can I ask you for help if I don't know what to do?" _

"Sure," Rock promised. When Zero wanted to protect Rock's littlest brother, and everyone? "Do you want to take the capsule? It was designed as life support for X, so it should help him patch up his systems faster." Of course they'd kept it for him, but if X was going to be with the Wilybots all the time, then if it was there they could get him into it faster, and it wasn't like it couldn't be teleported back here so Rock and Dr. Light could take a look at him. "And you should take a nap along with X." That way, he'd be asleep until Blues was awake again, and he'd be there when X woke up.

Zero carried X to the capsule for him, and disconnected from Rock right before he went into sleep mode. Before that, he could feel that Zero found the capsule comfortable even if it really couldn't be by human standards, especially since Zero was asleep on top of X. It was designed to make sure that baby androids were comfortable, though, and Zero's body was an android-type.

It was X who woke up first, and pushed up past Zero, stretching, and said, "Familiar not-squishy!" He patted the side of the capsule hello.

"You can take the capsule," home, "back with you," Rock told X, and his littlest brother looked very happy at him.

"Can I have familiar squishy too?" X asked an instant later.

…Well, he was supposed to be learning what he could do (get away with) right now?


	10. Learning Experiences

"Well…" It really wasn't the intent behind this system, but… "I suppose it's good that you understand the difference between fiction and reality, and want to do it here because you know it's really not something you should do in real life, where people will get hurt." Die, if a warbot this powerful decided to attack a military base for fun.

The stardroid nodded eagerly.

"Far be it from me to say that people shouldn't play video games," when that was one of his hobbies, at least in the copied memories. "As long as you understand that this isn't something you should be using to learn what you should do in real life, just an unrealistic game."

Shoulders drooped.

"I'll keep the combat simulation part realistic," he reassured the boy, because it didn't take being patched with robot master programming to be weak against adorable, sad little newbuilt robots.

Zero perked up again.

"Well… alright." Still, since he had the opportunity, he really should include _some_ educational value… "Since you wanted multiple opponents, I'll also set it up to handle multi-player… I mean, multiple participants." Teaching a learning system the benefits of cooperation was educational, right? Perhaps he could even try to script stealth missions and other situations where Zero could experiment with problem-solving options besides violence even within the game scenarios…

* * *

"You don't remember what happened?"

"Obviously not. How the human brain writes to memory… Well, it's fantastic at writing to memory, the technical problems lie in the conscious mind building connections to access those memory files," when most people's conscious minds were idiots that didn't use the information they had, so it wasn't as though letting them access more of the brain's stored information would help any. Building a decent file access protocol for the human brain was a solved problem: it was just an irritating amount of work since the human brain wasn't user-friendly and it was far simpler to retrieve or access data from an external drive like a diary, accounting spreadsheet or online wiki since computers other than the human brain were _searchable_.

"Until that boy does some actual _studying_, at least he has the sense not to tamper with unfamiliar systems," Dr. Wily said, blithely not making the connection that he'd tried to program Zero to tamper with robot master emotions and value systems, to override how their minds handled weighing various factors with his idea of how their minds should work. "Imagine if he'd tried to copy the memories a robot master would have formed of a timeframe like that over in the same format…" Well, his Zero would have the capability to undo the screw-up, at least. Once he figured out what he'd done wrong, and who knew how long that would take.

"He didn't change you back until Blues booted up fully and Zero could confirm that the changes you made left him operational. I couldn't hear the conversation, but I believe…"

"Blues told him what to do? Good." 'Put him back the way you found him' was probably involved in that conversation, then. "He might be trying to restrict Zero's actions, but at least some of that is going to be because master or not, Zero is young and therefore stupid." It wasn't in Zero's best interests for him to go around screwing things up because he had more power than sense, just like Dr. Wily's other children. What temporarily converting someone into a robot master with a robot master's worldview would do to a human… "Well now." Given Blues' opinion on significant personality changes? He hadn't talked Zero into _sparing _the WRU members, he'd talked him into murdering them in a way that wouldn't bother robot masters who didn't share Blues' opinion of mental editing. Murdering them and replacing them with an equal number of obedient little robots, and leaving them that way long enough for a new baseline to develop, then turning them back and, unlike with Dr. Wily, making sure the memories and new emotional bonds remained intact?

He found it pleasingly vicious, a nicely _karmic _death. If only Blues had remained, babysat the Third Numbers and helped handle strategy instead of running off to go die in a gutter somewhere, the absurd treatment of robots could have been _handled _years ago.

"Where is he? Zero."

"The Great Hall," Shadow reported.

Dr. Wily had expected him to have to go check. Had he tapped surveillance systems, set a robot to watch Zero or did he have stardroid radar? Zero's aura of power wasn't exactly subtle, although of course Dr. Wily had built in some stealth capability so Zero could conceal it. Not because Zero should _need _to hide, but he might want his hosts to have infiltration capability (Shadow) instead of being ridiculously easy to see coming once someone else built a detector for this energy.

He found Zero in a capsule a little too small for him: it helped that the lid wasn't closed. Forte and Gospel were curled up against the side of it.

"He's playing," Dr. Wily heard from behind him when he tapped his foot, considering kicking one of them awake since they didn't respond to his presence. He turned to see the Lightbot android yawn and stretch, still sprawled out on Zero's throne instead of getting up from it or even sitting up straight. "Familiar not-my capsule makes simulations," X said. "Zero wanted big combat simulations against a lot of trained humans with unit tactics so he could play without killing real humans and upsetting his hosts."

He did look like Blues, although Blues had never sparkled happily at people. Dr. Wily wondered if Blues was having X spend time with the Fifth Numbers. It seemed a natural match if he wanted babysitting services, but that would depend on how he wanted Dr. Light's latest learning system to turn out.

Albert turned back to Zero, his greatest creation, lying there in that capsule. Crib. That was definitely a crib.

Gospel's leg twitched: judging from the smile on Forte's sleeping face, they were definitely dreaming of chasing things down and blowing them up.

"Why aren't you in there?" he asked the green-eyed boy. "It's your crib."

"I was, but then I got bored. Zero said Blues said he'd work out a way for it to not bore me, but Blues is doing thing with Zero's hosts while Zero's combat protocols are engaged so restraining them if Blues scares the hosts doesn't make Zero all messed up."

"Video games _bored _you?" Robot masters tended not to like them either, at least not the violent ones. They'd rather play Minecraft and Animal Crossing in real life, building things with their robots and looking after the robots. The difference between dislike and boredom: interesting. Boredom indicated indifference, meaning X hadn't had a robot master's default reaction to seeing the deaths of even imaginary people.

The android pouted. "It's just the same thing over and over. It doesn't give me data on anything outside the game, and I can't start doing different things to see what happens because that messes up what Zero and Forte want to do. Why does Zero want to do that, but he never wants to experiment and think about experiments with me? He says thinking about things is hard, but he _wants _things hard when it's a game like this!"

"Complaining that people are intellectually lazy… Next you'll be whining that the sky is blue. _We've noticed_," Dr. Wily grumbled.

The Lightbot smiled.

* * *

Not Dr. Wily, not his father (a father! So much better than builders), but still sharp-tinged insight combing through his mind. More than willing to be critical, to point out a flaw and expect him to do something about that _now_, but there was affection underlying it, a desire to keep him alive instead of a demand that he measure up or be terminated.

"Do you still think that you died?" he dared to ask only because of that feeling, only after Blues had worked for five minutes without showing anger at him. He had helped Star find Blues, he had tended him for Dr. Wily thinking it was for the best.

It was still dangerous to ask, to provoke this particular robot master, but Shade was in danger from the moment he was built. Wily Island was so absurdly safe by comparison to that park that he felt almost compelled to take risks here, lest he lose his edge.

"Take a human at five, fifteen, fifty. Put them in the same situation. Every version would take completely different actions for completely different reasons, based on completely different experiential sets. It isn't likely that there would be anything at all in their behavior to indicate that these three different people are in fact the same person, that there is any common soul shared by all three. Whether they count as the same person despite this is a philosophical question. Most humans simply assume that they're the same person their entire lives, but I was created partially to think about self and emotions, so of course I looked at the facts."

Blues worked far faster than Shade could have, the ease of long practice (desperate struggle to keep his own systems from going haywire, spawning bugs cascading into catastrophic failure), but there was still a slow, patient and painstaking feel to it. Shade knew better than to think that Blues was a peaceful person, but his mind still had a peaceful air to it right now. Meditative, Shadow would have said. Calmness born of peace and patterns, the same as the sound of the waves.

"Are you still angry with me for not stopping Dr. Wily from saving you… No. From infecting you with Zero's virus before Zero was even awake?"

The robot master whistled softly. He didn't make any move to access Shade's emotional subroutines, or logic processor to see what the younger robot master was thinking, just kept working on the current section.

Until he wasn't anymore.

Until Shade found himself unable to move, unable to do anything but register what was happening as his personality was cut off from sending signals to his limbs, as his security protocols were relentlessly deleted, feeling those defenses (suddenly so feeble!) excised from his mind with a cold blade.

Feeling that same blade readied again, to scythe clean his main drives, to reformat everything that made him Shade.

"Right now," whispered a terrifyingly human voice, "I could delete the core of who you are."

His silver tongue betrayed him: he thought that long practice had given him the ability to keep talking no matter what danger he was in, what fresh horrors he was faced with. Yet somehow this made his mind shake, unable to comprehend what was happening, begging anything that would listen that it wasn't, worse than watching one of his robots torn apart and knowing that if he acted he would die and all the others, what would happen to them?

Why was, why was the person he'd _trusted_, the one he'd let into his mind, doing this to him? Was it his fault, had he been found wanting? He wanted to believe that was it, wanted to beg forgiveness even though he didn't know what he'd… No, he did know what he'd done wrong.

The presence in his mind that should have cared for him instead tearing at him and his defenses, what kept him safe and well: that was what the virus did to Blues, while Shade helped it along, worked to keep Blues' systems from escaping into meltdown.

That same chirp came from his emotional subroutines, but it couldn't pass his lips.

It was still heard.

He wanted to collapse with relief when he felt Blues' thoughts soften towards him, even though that knife was still held to his throat.

"What I could do to you? This is what you asked Zero to do to Dr. Wily. To our father. To create the new is to destroy the old," the eldest said softly, and returned to his work.

The threat of imminent death was still there. The confusion of signals left his thoughts scrambling, caught between two contradictory emotions. Trust, because here was proof that Blues, that _someone _cared and he was safe. He would live. Terror, because here was proof that someone found him unworthy to continue to exist. He would die.

"If you don't figure it out by the time I'm done, I'll tell you," Blues said. "If you figure it out before I'm done, I'll delete the process when you do," the one held in suspension within Shade's own drives, a sword of Damocles that had already pierced his skin and could at any moment continue its fall to cleave his skull open and smash the contents.

Would Master Zero really allow Blues to kill him like this? "Master Zero," he said, and knew he'd guessed right when the words passed his lips. "We're uploaded to his cloud, within his power." No longer truly resident in their drives, even if Zero emulated the systems they were used to well enough it was hard even for a system manager to spot the difference. "At any moment, he could end us." That was the point Blues was making, that was what Shade was supposed to compare this to and learn from the experience. Learn what? That this was not something to be done lightly, that even done with the best of intentions it was still cruel?

"Yes," Blues told him, and he could feel the 'good boy.' "He holds our souls in his hands. I was placed in the power of someone who could and very well might have wiped me by someone I loved." His father, even if Blues was infinitely lucky enough to have two fathers who loved him.

The threat to his self that he sensed now: Yes, it was no different from the one that already existed. He trusted Zero with that power because he trusted Dr. Wily. Zero was born of his father's will to save his children.

"My younger brother," the elder murmured, and yes. The command that pressed against his systems, ready to be input, was withdrawn.

He could breathe again, exert manual control over his air cooling system even if he didn't quite feel that it was safe to test movement systems yet, when Blues was going over his systems and that meant he should stay put until the elder was done and not move around distractingly.

Blues, Blues was also family. Yes?

"You are my little brother, born of my coding and the work of my creators' hands," just as I am, "and I will protect you." That didn't mean he wouldn't terrify Shade, when he'd protected Rock all these years by outright attacking him, but an older brother. Like Quick Man, who rescued Shade from that terrible place and carried out all of Shade's robots, but willing to talk with him and tend to him.

Teach him.

"You're good at pushing your luck…" That ultimate compliment? For Blues to see Shade as not just worth debugging, but upgrading? The way Forte wanted Dr. Wily to think he was worth upgrading, and now he and Zero worked to improve their performance together?

The eldest sighed, and combed his thoughts through Shade's mind again, as his own emotional state calmed, something in it of waves on the shore, or perhaps what he sensed from Blues when the eldest rested by the sound of those waves. "We'll see," he said, and Shade smiled, because that wasn't a no, that was a 'perhaps, with time,' and with time those waves could grind the mountains that resisted them into sand.

Time, he had time now, they were going to _live _now, instead of both of them living under the shadow of death, Blues thanks to his systems and Shade due to humans.

"Stop putting Zero in situations where he's going to end up killing people without intending to," Blues told him. Blues, by infecting him. Dr. Wily, when Shade asked Zero to change him permanently, to overwrite the human Dr. Wily. "If you can start thinking before you advise mind control," he said to the robot master who'd asked Dr. Wily for a mind control master weapon. "Then I'll think about it."

* * *

_Video games are an official hobby of Dr. Light's, so yeah. X had a lot of time to kill in the capsule: I think I could clear out my RPG backlog in a century. Probably. _Child of Light _would be a good parent-child game for them to play, despite the appropriate name._

_X, no. Just because Zero is hogging your father doesn't mean you should try to find out if Zero's father is any fun. _

_Trying to get back to writing/posting. Will hopefully be able to update _Burn The Bridge Home _this weekend, but I need to write ninetyish percent of next week's chapter. _


	11. Who Let Dr Wily Babysit?

The childlike Lightbot was moping.

Not sulking, he was used to that from Forte. Maybe even pining. At first he was properly impressed by Dr. Wily's lab, even if he had to ask excited questions for that thick metal head to understand why he should be as impressed as these technological miracles warranted, but he soaked things up like a sponge.

Now they were on day three of Zero discovering video games. Or Dr. Light's AI trying to distract him with video games from doing his job and conquering the world.

Dr. Wily was beyond sick of X looking sadly with big green eyes in what X seemed to think was the direction of the capsule, or perking up every time metal boots clanked into the lab only to lower his head and look heartbroken (as though he had any idea of what real suffering was) when it wasn't Zero come to play with him.

Well, Dr. Wily had cooked up something that would deal with _that_.

The nanite-based 3-d printer went ding.

Normally it had a more dignified process complete signal, but he'd been using it to make cookies.

"Eat your cookies!" he ordered when X didn't acknowledge the signal and hurry over to the printer.

He'd ordered X to get out of his sight if he was going to do anything disgustingly cute, so X took the cookies, Squishy and Small Blue Thing under a lab table with three beakers before starting to act out Coffee and Pastries with Squishy as Blues, Small Blue Thing as Rock and an elaborately folded piece of white fabric some robot master must have shaped with bits of wire for him as Kalinka…

Was that one of his lab coats?

His damn kids aside, it was disgustingly cute. How had Thomas managed to make a robot master even more disgustingly cute than Rock?

Well, however it worked, Dr. Wily was going to study it and weaponize it.

As soon as X ate one of those 'cookies.'

A learning system needed learning experiences if it was going to turn out with any kind of worthwhile intelligence. Running a war was a learning experience.

Finally there were crunching noises that weren't play-acting, and then an interested noise.

Dr. Wily heard X eating a second cookie.

He would have _liked _to attribute that to the things working well, but "Get out of there," he ordered, rapping on the table.

X rolled out, and it took him a bit to sit up, which made the Lightbot laugh. He blinked up at Dr. Wily, eyes flickering between red and green as he watched. "Dizzy!" he said happily. "Dizzy cookies!" he rolled back under the table and came out with another one, which he started to nibble on, eyes still flickering.

Then he abandoned the cookie to roll around again. "Whee!" He just laughed when he banged into one of the cupboards.

"May I ask why the great Dr. Wily wanted to get a newbuilt buzzed?" Blues asked, teleporting into the lab.

"It's an upgrade of Zero's virus, designed to more effectively interfere with his systems," in order to reprogram them.

"Well, congratulations: you invented android alcohol," his oldest son informed him, smirking, as he ducked under the table to retrieve the plate of cookies. He paused, came out to put the plate of cookies on the table and reached back down to bring up the Kalinka doll. "If they end up enough like humans, future generations might even thank you for it."

X rolled back over and had to reach out a couple times before his arm could tap Blues' pant leg instead of missing. "Cookie!"

Blues smiled, somewhat condescending but mostly fond and amused. "That's not how you code requests to other units. What's the correct function to call?"

"Cookieplease! But, but cookie!"

"You're the one who enjoys new sensations and things that cause your systems to grow and develop, like simulated system strain and real hacking attempts," Blues said patiently. "I _don't _like people trying to hack me."

X rolled over onto his back so unfocused eyes could be pointed in Blues' direction. "Cookie?" he repeated imploringly. "Blues plus cookie?"

Blues just looked at him for a moment, before visibly giving up, reaching to the plate and bringing a cookie to his mouth… to mime eating it.

"Cookie!" X said happily. "Zero plus cookie!"

"These are a modification of Zero's virus, X. They won't tamper with his systems and get _him _drunk if he eats them." Blues handed X the same cookie he'd held, well, close to his mouth. No matter how cute X was, Blues still found being hacked too distasteful to actually press it to his lips, allow it into his systems.

X took it and nibbled on it without realizing that Blues hadn't really eaten the cookie, but then what concepts of eating _was _he developing, when he mainly interacted with robot masters who might pretend to eat for his benefit at most? Did he think that his stuffed animals really were 'eating' the cookies and 'drinking' the coffee?

The android giggled and rolled into Blues to pat him on the leg, then rolled away again. "Zero plus cookie equals play." A yawn made him change his plan to find Zero and be drunk together. "Squishy?" he wondered, arms and legs casting around him for the bear.

Blues brought him the polar bear and the smaller blue bear with the embroidery… Dr. Wily peered at it. Yes, someone had taken the time to remove and replace the stitching that said 'boy' so the announcement on its stomach now said "It's a robot!"

Dr. Wily didn't want to know which of his kids was responsible for either picking out a birth announcement bear to give to a newbuilt or the 'upgrade.'

X fell asleep with the Dr. Light-bear squished under his head and the blue bear on top of his stomach, his limbs sprawled every which way in the middle of the floor. Blues left once X was comfortable, which left Dr. Wily to call for, "Shadow!" to "Put that newbuilt somewhere out of the way!"

He found out the next day why Blues hadn't taken any revenge or even scolded him, and no, it wasn't because Blues was smart enough now to realize that it was safer for X if he could be infected. In between naps, X spent the day nibbling on cookies until he got giggly and then rolling around and trying to walk and talk despite the system disruption, which resulted in a lot of babble and knocking into Dr. Wily's tables. The punishment for making baby androids tipsy was dealing with tipsy baby androids.

Dr. Wily could yell at him, but X would just smile and see if he could get in range to hug Dr. Wily without falling over. Shadow intervened once when X got enough momentum (aimed correctly) that he would have knocked into Dr. Wily and sent the scientist falling back against a cluttered table.

Trying to resist Dr. Wily's reprogramming was a challenge for a system built by Dr. Light, but X _enjoyed _challenges, saw them as growth opportunities.

At least it stopped the moping, not that he'd admit that out loud, Dr. Wily thought, outwardly grumbling as he straightened up some papers that had been knocked over by the android's latest failure to walk straight while fighting off a nanite infestation. "Stop that!" he ordered when he saw X imitate him by trying to straighten up a pile of the fallen papers still on the floor. Hand-eye coordination wasn't improved by system disruption any more than walking straight was – incapacitating the target would make it easier to keep them from escaping, so they could be flooded with more of Zero's virus.

Stamping over to get his blueprints for the new warbot types back just put him in range for X to grab him and pull him in. So help him, if the Lightbot was trying to take after his brother and 'capture Dr. Wily…'

"What are you doing?" he demanded when X pressed his head against his stomach. "Stop that."

"Equals pat me on the head," X explained. "Or skritchies. Skritchies?"

"If I wanted a cat I'd build one," Dr. Wily muttered, exasperated. "Let me go you bucket of microscopic bolts, I have work to do."

"Make more cookies?"

X was finally out? "No." He didn't _want _to help the Lightbot train its systems to resist the virus – he wasn't going to make another new viral strain until he had more information on how to craft one that could hack X.

"Make more Zero?"

"What, you want one of his spare bodies for another teddy bear?"

"Zero."

No wonder Blues hadn't done anything. Inventing something that made robots act stupid punished itself. "The last thing the world needs is for people to act even stupider than they are. You're capable of formatting your sentences correctly, so do it!"

"Lonely," X said, looking up at him as though that should be all he needed to know to fix whatever was going on. Unlike most of the people X spent time with, Dr. Wily wasn't hooked up to Zero and wasn't a mind reader.

"Shadow! Bring me Blues. He brought him here, _he _can deal with this," Dr. Wily said, and attempted to storm off.

"Lonely," X repeated when Blues arrived.

"You're not alone. Robot masters like to spoil people, and you're good at being adorable. You can have all the company you want."

"Like me," X said, after a pause. "Zero is like me?" Was that a question, or not? X didn't seem to be sure.

"No, he isn't," Blues said firmly. "You're both newbuilt, you're both new species, but you're not the same species. You don't want to become like Zero, and Zero won't become like you. He has his duty to us, and you don't want to force him to disregard that and become like you. Do you?"

"Zero spent time with me. His nanites are there, but he's not thinking about things with me anymore. I could make trouble like you would, but I don't want to make trouble for Zero. Trouble means he can't spend time with me even thought he wants to."

"You want Zero to _want _to spend time with you."

X nodded.

"You want someone to want to figure things out the way you want to figure things out. You want to not be alone in that, but you also want someone to want your company. Zero needed you, and that made it easier to figure out how to fit with him, how to get things out of your relationship. Now you're not getting what you want anymore, and that's the kind of problem you're supposed to solve," the oldest robot said, relatively kindly.

Another nod.

"Can't let you become an obsessive stalker like those poorly-programmed attempts at proto-AI," Blues said wryly. "Let's go make Zero stop playing video games for awhile, and then I'll make someone draw up a schedule for you so you can't get bored. Star Man, I think – the best way to get a job done is to give it to someone who's already busy."

X tugged at Blues' coat. "Zero."

"I just said that I'd… Ah. No, I can't tell you how to make him want to spend time with you, doing what you want to do, in the future. You're both growing, growing means changing, and sometimes people just don't end up with anything in common. You may just have to make other friends."

Blues pulled a duplicate of his scarf out of thin air and started to work it into and around the shaping wires of the labcoat doll. "You can't share all your experiences with him. You can't control who he becomes, and…" He paused, looking at X.

Then he turned, slowly, to regard Dr. Wily. "Your virus," he said, "has given him _ideas_." It might not be able to force X to agree with those ideas, but it still offered strategies and concepts to a system _very _interested in how to get what it wanted.

His best friend wasn't choosing to spend time with him? He didn't have anyone to investigate the universe with?

_That could be changed._

Well now, Dr. Wily thought, and smiled.

* * *

_And X acquires one more horrible influence!_

_Obviously Dr. Wily is evil, but giving mind-altering substances to minors now._ _I doubt Wily Island has a legal drinking age, but even so. _


	12. Apparently We're Dating Now

_So, I suppose the fic is now officially no longer gen! _

_Kalinka and Blues, if pairings sometimes bother you. I think this is the first time I've managed to write these two actually happening. Well, to the extent a first date counts. _

* * *

"So neglecting everyone and playing video games instead is helping?" Kalinka asked, surprised.

It was only a mild surprise, not enough to pull her mind entirely away from the awareness that there was a hand. Holding hers. They weren't touching skin to whatever exotic material Wily had used for this particular unique unit. Their hands were separated by his white opera gloves (actual gloves, she'd seen him put on another pair once after X knocked into him while Blues was holding a full coffee cup) and her fur-lined motorcycle gloves.

She hoped they weren't oily.

It would have been nice to ride out here together, but he was busy and could teleport and he weighed much more than (most) humans even if he was still a little shorter than her, so it really wouldn't have been practical for him to ride behind her on her motorcycle.

Even if he'd let her cling to his waist (so high up) that time…

"I should have thought of it," he said as they crunched through the leaves, "but both of us are aware of how things _should _be for robot masters. We have families. Most of the infectees are companybots. They're not thinking of Zero as their father, and their experience isn't with people that love them. They're used to _owners_, and when the owner isn't happy?" Blues mimed slitting his throat. "Zero's having fun instead of dwelling on how he can't make all of them feel safe, so they're less nervous, and Zero detects that they feel safer and that makes him happier since it's not only what he's built for, he's _decided _that he wants to protect them. Since we can access his functions remotely, I'm having trouble prying him out of virtual reality for anything but sparring with Forte."

"Well, as long as he's having fun?" Kalinka offered, and wondered that she wasn't feeling disappointed. They were in the woods, walking by a river, and it was the same as when they were getting coffee. Talking shop, about robots and their families, not about each other.

Blues was a very private person, she knew that. So, just the fact that he was talking meant a lot, as did the fact that he was talking to her about what mattered to him.

"Zero needs practice interacting with people. I was working on how to get him and Forte to do more human activities safely. It's good that the children are calming down, but someone needs to think long-term. I wish enrolling X in preschool was an option."

She remembered when she was… difficult, how her brothers were sometimes a little unhappy to find out that she had a vacation coming up. "Oh? Is he lonely now that Zero's playing video games instead of playing with him?"

"X liked that the two of them were both learning to do things. He'd love an environment where everyone else was also learning to interact and other basic skills, but he can't be put into a smaller body the way I got this upgrade," into a larger, older looking one, courtesy of Zero's power, X's schematics and Blues' understanding of robotics design. "His learning curve would also be different from the rest of the class, and even if I found an environment willing to accept an android, you know how humans are about difference. X might end up feeling even more alone." Blues was worried about his younger brother. He worried about all of them.

"I remember how I felt when I was younger, going from being the only child, special in a good way, to being the odd one out. But in most of the world, it's robot masters that don't, or didn't, have the chance to, have the _right _to interact with people like them, so they didn't feel so alone. Is that another reason you wanted X to tag along with you, so he could meet people who weren't robot masters?" Or Dr. Wily, she didn't say aloud because he was still Blues' father.

"That didn't hurt, but the main reason was the one I told you, trying to get him some practice being out in the world. Practice he could pass on to Zero, so I wasn't working from scratch. I've taken Zero out in public before, but always environments where plenty of humans weren't acting normally either, and I didn't need to check the internet to see at least some people figured it out each time. Forte passes much better than Zero does, and I think that's because Forte isn't trying. He's a punk, X is a cute kid who would have very little trouble passing if he looked his mental age, but Zero is trying too hard to be mature and conscientious to still be as weird as he is if he had the experience of a human his mental age. He knows that humanity, as a society," he added for Kalinka's benefit, "has attempted to commit genocide against robot masters, so human territory is enemy territory and it's filled with millions of complex signs and factors he doesn't know how to analyze yet. So, when he's not on-task he's too focused on taking in as much data for analysis as he can to remember to act nonchalant." A reserved, cautious poker face, ready to go for a weapon if anyone tried anything funny – she'd seen the footage.

"Is there someone who could write a simulation game?" Kalinka wondered. The question wasn't the programming, but having a good enough model of human interaction. Especially in groups or large numbers! The difficulties Kalinka's brothers had made her aware of just how much she did without really thinking about it, and how hard it was to tell them what to do when she didn't quite know herself what it was that she did.

He smiled. "Phrase it as stealth training for Zero's benefit, and since X wants more practice learning to interact with humans and make friends he'd probably be willing to play too. Thanks." It wouldn't finish off those two birds, but progress was progress.

And it was something he could do to help his brothers.

"I'm glad that Roll is willing to be friends with me, but if I didn't have practice avoiding the Second Law," Kalinka didn't mention Roll's practice getting around that law, "It would be very hard on her. I think you're right: for everyone's sake, it's good if Zero learns to make friends with people he can't control."

Blues grimaced, looking disappointed with himself. "Humans aren't in that category. I was hoping I could keep him from finding that out for longer – it helps that he's really not interested in engineering. I didn't _tell _him, but I was involved in what led to him figuring that out and I wasn't awake so I couldn't nudge him away from thinking about it. Fortunately, he doesn't _want _to look after humans. Traumatized companybots are already hard enough on him without expanding his workload by that many orders of magnitude."

Damn, she thought, clenching a fist inside the sleeve of her coat. She'd suspected as much, from what Ra Moon and the stardroids were capable of. "In that case, it really is vital that he learn how to get along with X." So he had to develop ways of handling arguments and all the struggles in being friends with other people who weren't just like you when reaching for the virus wasn't an option, before he found himself struggling and there _was _an option like the virus right there.

The easy was dangerous. The easy seduced. The way it was easier if robot masters weren't people, because slaves were convenient and children were anything but.

"If there's anything I can do…" she offered, again.

"This does help," he told her, and stopped walking. She halted as well, to not let go of his hand. "The empathy makes this easier, and I'm sorry for using it," even if he'd explained how exactly he would be using it to read her somewhere there _weren't _cameras or watchers. "But I don't think like ordinary robot masters myself. Forte's psychology was deliberately tweaked, while mine was more…" he paused, before deciding to just say, "It's a long story."

Blues was the first of the unique units Dr. Wily built outside of the Numbered Series to fight Mega Man. The series that produced Forte and eventually culminated in Zero.

"I care about Dr. Wily," he told her, "but he's not someone it's safe to confide in, and he'd lecture more than listening. You have ideas, and I'm glad to hear them, but…"

She nodded. "Talking to a parent isn't like talking to a peer, even if Dr. Wily is rather childish." Kalinka hesitated, but "Do you not get along with the Second Numbers?" If he'd been originally built before the Third War and only upgraded into a combat body then, that implied he was of a design generation with the Seconds, not the Thirds, which made him almost as old as Rock and Roll.

"I was a side project of Dr. Wily's, on the back burner, and I wasn't part of their mission. I didn't actually speak with any of them until after Dr. Wily upgraded me, and they saw me more as adult supervision for the Third Numbers than on their team. They were too busy moving their mining and production to space once teleportation was workable to want to babysit more newbuilts than the ones they'd already rescued, much less deal with Dr. Wily. Fortunately, he'd gone stir-crazy being locked up that long unable to build things, so he just went to work on me, the Doc Men and the Third Numbers instead of asking any of them to do the asteroid mission for him. They were focused on their mission, and so was I, so although we have an understanding we don't have much to do with each other." He laughed. "I suppose now they think of me as Zero's babysitter, so not much changed there."

Past him, she could see Tango give up on waiting for them to catch up and turn towards a tree. Kalinka smiled, and she knew it was strange.

It wasn't like she'd crushed on him that much after he rescued her from Dr. Wily. Yes, he'd brought her home, but he was another Wilybot, and she'd been kidnapped by a Wilybot in the first place.

He was a robot master, and if her father hadn't built robot masters in the first place then Dr. Wily would have left them alone.

Then he'd grabbed her, threatened her, while Mega Man and his copy fought. Trapped by unyielding metal, she'd known there _had _to be a reason, and finally it occurred to her that she was safer there. It was for everyone's safety, and after seeing Roll's side blasted open, when Kalinka wouldn't have survived that, and of course Blues let her go to help?

Roll was the one who was outraged on her behalf, but Kalinka had wanted him to _say _it. To say that he'd cared about her survival.

The longer she spent around him now, the more she felt connected to him, she thought, and a moment later realized what that could mean.

"You're scared," he knew, frowning.

"I feel like we're connected. Somehow," she added, and deflated a little, suddenly feeling that the thought was pathetic more than scared. As though she wanted the virus or some other stardroid mental tampering just to make this real!

"I'm reading your emotions and responding to them," he reminded her, although there was a little hesitance there, as though he felt that wasn't all of it. "I always cared about people, but now I can respond in ways that let them know that. It makes an impressive difference," he said, because understanding robotics did take something of a scientific mindset, and he'd been doing his own repairs before she started wanting to learn how to repair her brothers. And Roll.

She glanced away, into the trees. The day was cool and bright. "There are things I can't talk about with my brothers, and don't quite want to with Roll, although I'm sure she already knows much of it." She'd seen Kalinka at her most shameful.

When she looked back, he'd followed her gaze, and she could see his red eyes were troubled over the rims of his sunglasses.

"It's only fair if things go both ways," he said, looking back to meet her eyes. "A robot works for their master and the master cares for their robot. I need Zero to care for robot masters, and that's only fair, it can only work, if I care about him. I want my freedom, but I can't ask for it when I can't allow him to be free. Everyone needs him too much." He sounded resigned, perhaps with even a trace of guilt, more than resentful. This was reality, as he saw it, but just because he had to ask Zero to take up that burden didn't make it fair. "Someone would have to own the Lightbots when Dr. Light was gone, for the future of robot masters. I hoped that you could come to see robots as family. Despite what Shadow thinks of me, I had nothing to do with Skull Man. You became a better person on your own. I was built-" he stopped himself.

"I am capable of caring about humans," he said instead. "All robot masters are. I knew that you could help me, as someone who isn't a robot master getting along with and taking care of robot masters, which is what Zero has to do…" he paused, and sighed. "I'm not used to talking this much, or explaining myself. I do care about you, that was never in doubt. I cared about Forte as soon as I knew of his existence and how much trouble he'd have, even as he represented opportunity. Before, the problem was that I had so little to give and so little time left, so what could I afford to do for the people I cared about?

"Finding out that you and Roll became friends gave me some hope for the future, that even if humanity would take awhile to change there would still be humans like the doctors in these generations, growing up with us. Yet that's still you as a symbol, and you in relation to robot masters." He shook his head. "They say I'm a free spirit because I walked that lonely road," a slight roll of his eyes at that, she could see over the glasses – it was nice he wore ones with smaller lenses now – "but I still think like a robot master, in terms of interrelationships, love and service. You're a roboticist and grew up with robot masters. We're both aware there are several compatibility issues – a lot of them completely different ones, I'm sure." Ones that each could see from their perspective, that the other might not until they ran afoul of them.

"Do you want me to call them in advance to see if Roll or Rock are free every time there's an Older Siblings' Association Meeting?" she offered tentatively, because it was better than him not showing up.

He examined her for a moment, trying to tell what the offer signified. That kind of thing reassured her that it really was just reading emotional radiation, not knowing what she was thinking. "Then what happens if they aren't free?"

"I have a motorcycle," she said and blushed a little. "I mean, we don't have to meet inside the city if you'd rather go for a walk like this, or maybe try to attend something… musical? Incognito."

Thankfully he didn't ask, 'Folk music?' It was a cute name, but did her parents really have to name her after a _children's _song? She was rather put out by that during certain of her (earlier) teen years. She didn't dislike folk music, but it was hard to work with it playing.

"Your motorcycle?" he asked her instead, tilting his head. "I don't dislike speed, and I'm fond of the wind."

"I'll reinforce it," she promised, and realized she was already smiling.


	13. This Is Literally Your Job

_This weird little thing should be wrapping up in two more chapters after this. …or that was the plan, but one of the muses Dungeon Bypassed the upset I was going to use to give this thing an actual climax. _

* * *

"Meditating again?" Shade asked when he answered Shadow's rare request. Unlike him to ask to have any other unit, especially Shade, come to his room.

The Third Number had a room! Not simply a storage room for the robots, with a door meant to keep the robots in, not exclude unwanted visitors, but a room covered in mats woven with some artificial fiber that wouldn't be too bothered by the weight of careless robots. Shade couldn't attribute Shadow's fondness for human clothing to his strangeness, not when the Eldest and the elder Lightbots were the same way.

Really, and Shadow thought Shade smiled too much. How could the Wilybots not be grateful for what they had?

But then, Shadow was not entirely a fellow robot master, was he? Dr. Wily had repaired a unit just as alien as Zero. Not a robot master, but a _combat _robot.

"So, why did you ask me here while you were meditating?" Shade asked, sitting himself down with an easy movement born of practice, careful not to let his wings tear the floor.

"I must learn to maintain my composure in the presence of Dr. Wily's heir. Your energies are… muted, compared to his presence, but you have a talent for disrupting my meditations," Shadow told him. "You may be far more talkative than the Eldest, but you are nowhere near as infuriating."

"Isn't the goal to…"

"The goal is to _not _disgrace myself by attacking other robots."

"Ah, yes, you want someone you _don't _already want to flip out and kill," Shade said, amused. "Should I be flattered?"

"That I picked you over Dr. Wily's other creations because you are the second most irritating?"

"Then yes, I should be flattered. That I am capable of rousing other robot masters to action!"

Shadow knew better than to argue with him over the meaning of the word irritation, when Shadow had chosen to learn an outdated form of Japanese and knew that humans changed the meanings of words and which words they used over time.

Shade had Dr. Wily's bodyguard and de-facto lab assistant wanting his company, asking for his help! So he could do a better job assisting Dr. Wily. It wasn't the same as being Dr. Wily's assistant himself while Shadow was lost in space, but he knew that Dr. Wily found his enthusiasm straining, and was worried for his older creation.

Many of the robots here had difficulty being in the presence of a human. Shadow didn't, so assisting Dr. Wily was where he could best serve. The Eldest had Zero to manage, and that left Shade to make sure the others could fulfill those duties.

For Shadow to go to _him_, instead of any other unit, for help performing his duty? It was proof that his work had been recognized, that he had been accepted as the manager of Wily Island's robots. Shade knew that Shadow found him difficult (and much of that was Shade's fault for playing with him, trying to figure out Dr. Wily's preferred right hand), but he felt that Shade's skill outweighed that difficulty!

He grinned and watched Shadow until finally Dr. Wily's ninja spoke. "I need to kill you, but I cannot. No, I must not. This is the will of Dr. Wily. It is my duty to ensure he survives and escapes when his plans fail, but to let my own personal feelings make me _want _this plan to fail? Dr. Wily was already betrayed by Blues: I should not wish that on him, but for me to _want _Blues and Zero to hurry up and turn on him while it may still be possible to save him? I fear it is already too late for me to successfully extract him and bring him to a location where he can work on some method of freeing you without being followed or found."

Even if Shadow didn't appreciate Dr. Wily as much as Dr. Wily deserved, that was true of almost all of those lucky enough to be built Wilybots. Shadow was the only one to be obedient and _loyal_. Shade had yelled at him for not hurrying up and getting Dr. Wily to safety, but staying and fighting was what Dr. Wily wanted to do.

Now that Shadow's programming was making him see those who surrounded his father as monstrous killers, of course he was driven to protect Dr. Wily from them. For his obedience to his father to be more important than the need to kill them all?

"Ah," Shade said. "So _that's _why you've wanted that Lightbot to spend more time around our father."

"He cannot be controlled, so even if I cannot count on his assistance if Dr. Wily is attacked – I cannot even count on him not coming to Zero's assistance – he is still powerful, and destroying him might slow some of you down. The Eldest surely knows his weaknesses, but I'm sure X has the potential to be a formidable opponent." Made in the image of Mega Man.

Leaving a unit that resembled Mega Man behind to die, while Shadow tried to save Dr. Wily's life?

Or was it really that Shadow was willing to be that cold-blooded in the pursuit of _doing his job_ and defending Dr. Wily now? No. Shadow knew he couldn't save both of them.

Logical argument really wasn't going to help Shadow. _He _couldn't just feel Zero's desire to protect them, how it strained him the way it strained Shadow, how both of them were afraid they couldn't do their duties and protect the ones they wanted to protect.

From the data Shadow had, of _course _he would be afraid for Dr. Wily.

Sometimes Shade was somewhat thankful that he'd been forced to spend time not fighting, but _manipulating _for his life among humans. They had these things called _lies_ and the saying 'If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.'

Normally robot masters didn't lie to each other, because giving someone incorrect information? What if that caused them to make the wrong judgment about something, and it got someone hurt?

But lying in the service of getting Shadow to make the _correct _judgment about Zero, and keeping Shadow from blowing a gasket from the stress of trying to keep Dr. Wily safe in the face of overwhelming odds?

Lying in the service of the truth was just as acceptable as lying in the service of keeping humans from murdering people.

Yes, Shade thought to himself, preening. Shadow had _definitely _come to the right robot master.

* * *

Zero teleported in next to X and sat down on the sand. "Blues said I could just give up until I'm older."

X rolled over onto his side on the wave-patterned beach towel to look at Zero and tilted his head, interested. Give up what?

"Checking over their systems. Shouldn't I be pushing myself?" Zero asked him. X was the other unit with the infinite potential system, so maybe he might know better than Blues?

"We need to do difficult things," X said thoughtfully, "but you don't _want _to check over their systems."

"You're the one who is only supposed to do whatever you want to do," Zero reminded him. "I have _responsibilities_."

"And that's okay as long as you want to do all that stuff," X said, brushing aside the entire concept of doing things even if someone didn't want to do them at all. "You want to take care of them and have them not be upset, and because you don't know what to do, checking over their systems is just upsetting them."

Zero slumped a bit. "In order to improve, I should keep trying, so I can better do my duty. But right now, maybe it is my duty to not try it on them, when it upsets them. But how am I supposed to improve if I can't train?"

"Blues said to wait 'Until you're older,'" X reminded him. "When we're older, we'll know lots of things. Like the old people do."

Zero nodded hopefully at that: yes, their fathers and the eldest were highly competent in various areas, their fields. Since Zero's field was protecting his robot masters, then he'd like to think that with a few decades to work with and the infinite potential system he could become that good at his job.

"If you can't train system-checking, then train related things. Dr. Light didn't want me practicing on real people until I knew enough to not do certain things. If I want to find out how fragile humans and robots are, there's lots of information on that from tests other people already did. There are ways to get data to make good decisions without hurting people."

"…Yes," Zero said, satisfied. He couldn't give up on doing his duty, but trying another way, one that was less upsetting for the ones he was supposed to protect? That wasn't just acceptable, it was optimal. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," X said because of his own version of duty, "and thank you for bringing me a problem."

Zero was supposed to protect them. Oh, they were also his food supply, but _he was supposed to protect them_.

X wanted to look after people who brought him nice things like problems and company so they would keep doing that. Zero wasn't sure if that was actually incomprehensible or he wasn't so good at comprehending people yet.

He had a purpose, and it was a good one: how could X _not _want a purpose like that? Then again, it was like fighting: if other people wanted to be the ones to do Zero's job, there wouldn't be anything left for him to do. Not when most of them were older and knew more than he did. He'd be stuck creating space station components all the time in order to be useful instead of getting to train for the fun stuff with Forte.

"I'm glad I was brought here," X said cheerfully. "Real strange people are much better than simulations, I think." Oh?

Zero could sense what caught X's attention without turning around, so he knew before he stood and turned, hand on the hilt of his saber. He didn't need his saber, but strictly speaking he didn't need a buster either, or to fight physically at all, and Dr. Wily had built him with a buster and combat capabilities.

He wished that Shadow was willing to fight him more often… No, to practice with him instead of assessing Zero's combat capabilities, confirming that he couldn't actually kill Zero and then tapping out of the fight before he could reveal too many of his own capabilities.

It was because of Shadow that Zero had agreed when X said it would be much better of humans didn't have to be their enemies. Well, most humans. Zero liked fighting, but enemies could only be fought once. As a fellow Wilybot, Shadow wasn't Zero's enemy but Zero was Shadow's, and even that state of being half-enemies was enough to drastically reduce the number of training opportunities Shadow wwas willing to give him. If Shadow saw them as allies then he'd _want _to train against Zero, to learn techniques that might let him protect Dr. Wily against stardroids.

It wasn't that Zero wouldn't protect Dr. Wily when he was a valuable asset, but his hosts had to come first and Dr. Wily would yell at him if they didn't.

Shadow stopped before getting into strike range and gave him a formal bow. About to request another testing match? "I most humbly beg your forgiveness."

"…For?" Zero asked, eyes narrowing. What had Shadow done that would need forgiving? He hadn't acted against Zero's hosts, had he?

"For allowing my original programming to overwhelm my reason, and make me suspect you despite Dr. Wily's assurances. I have insulted you both by doubting your word, and continuing to see you as a potential threat to Dr. Wily and the inhabitants of Wily Island."

"But I am a potential threat to them," Zero pointed out, confused. "I'm powerful enough that I could easily kill Dr. Wily, therefore it is your duty to make plans in case I ever become a threat. I trust that X wouldn't deliberately hurt my hosts, but I still have to consider how to protect them if he tried. How is it an insult to me for you to do your duty as Dr. Wily's guard?"

"Yes," Shadow realized after a moment. "You are correct. It is not a betrayal to still be wary of you, it is part of a bodyguard's duty and thus not merely acceptable but required of me, regardless of Dr. Wily's wishes." Zero could feel him relax.

"I am terrifying," Zero said, in case that helped. "And you're not one of my hosts, so I'm not programmed to protect you, or Dr. Wily. You lost what you were first built to protect, and nearly lost Wily Island because of what was made into me. I would think _less _of you if you weren't working to find some way to protect them if it ever became necessary."

"This isn't being mean, or failing to purge bad programming," X said. "Zero _likes _that Forte wants to become strong enough to beat him. No one thinks you're doing anything bad, just not optimal. If you weren't Zero's enemy then you'd play with him more."

"Train," Zero said.

"Playing _is_ training," X said, with the air of 'I have assembled sources and an argument to support what I wanted to do anyway, so please try to argue with me?'

X _liked _people arguing with him. Zero should do it more often because it was hard, but even if getting his ass kicked was good for him because it made him stronger, losing too many times made him worry if he was good enough to protect his hosts.

First Blues and then Shadow was already enough difficulty for today, he decided with some relief.


End file.
